Greetings!  I'm Josh.  A long, long time ago I started this blog as a way to chat with family and friends about my life in college without having to actually call and talk to them one at a time.  It gave me an outlet to vent about my frustrations and surprises, and I got to know a lot of interesting people.  Then, after a few years, people started ( Read more... )

So, a guy in Norway killed ninety people with bombs and a shooting spree a week ago today. Muslim? No, he was actually a reactionary conservative trying to convince the state to keep Muslims out of the country. Crazy ( Read more... )

Wow, the state of Missouri is passing a law that takes a ton of old, useless statutes OUT of the official law books! The stated reason is to shorten the length of the books they have to print (they are also going primarily online with the data), but it's something that ought to be done anyway. Kudos for removing cruft laws, Missouri!

The US Government has been working since 2006 to force tobacco companies to add language in the harshest possible manner to cigarette packages decrying smoking. We're not talking "The Attorney General has determined that cigarettes are hazardous to your health" here, we're talking messages like this ( Read more... )

I have quite a bit of respect for Jon Stewart. I respect Steven Colbert as a comedian, but he's playing a role. Jon Stewart is a comedian too, and he can be very funny. But this article does a good job of explaining what's truly awesome about him. He's human. And there's not just a political agenda behind his jokes. He tries to use humor to ( Read more... )

It's great and all to have the facts on your side, but as often as not it means NOTHING because people would rather believe whatever makes them feel like a persecuted hero. For instance, according to Al-Jazeera, a majority of Egyptians believe that Israel or the US were behind the 9/11 attacks. I guess that shouldn't be surprising, since there ( Read more... )

This morning, Dad and I were discussing the Florida pastor who was planning to hold a book burning for the Koran on 9/11. Dad was saying that it wouldn't be such a big deal if the media wasn't covering the heck out of it, and how tiny hateful minorities can get so much face time. I happened to mention the Westboro church, and all the media ( Read more... )

Rush Limbaugh said this, in regard to free lunches at schools for poor children:

"God, this is just -- we can't escape these people. We just can't escape them. They live in the utter deniability of basic human nature. They actually have it in their heads somehow that parents are so rotten that they will let their kids go hungry and starve, unless ( Read more... )

Man, I remember back when I was excited to fill out pages and pages worth of internet meme questionaires. Those were good times... good times.

I found an interesting blog post comparing the progression of society to an arrowI've been in one of those depressive moods more or less throughout the past week. I remember back when I would have a ( Read more... )

This John Mackey guy seems pretty smart. He's the CEO of Whole Foods, and he wrote a response to Obama a few months ago criticizing his health care bill. Rather, he explained why his company's health care is better than what the government is planning, and had specific recommendations on how to improve it. This weekend, he had an interview with ( Read more... )