The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by bad Jim:

I swear, reading Coulter can lead to a temporary intelligence loss. Perhaps reading anything by anyone as aggressively stupid would. Last year I read a chapter of "Godless" online and it did a number on me for the better part of a day, until I had teased apart all the differently dishonest strands of argument. I've had more fun cleaning out drains and less pain having a firecracker explode in my fingers.

Last year I was in Amsterdam, and the middle-aged whores wearing the world's ugliest lingerie would rap their windows as I passed: look at me! I decided I'd rather not, and I apply the same aversion towards Miss Ann.

As to her appearance: I saw her on the Tonight Show, along with George Carlin, and she looked exactly as skinny as an ex-junkie I knew before she took up running. Her voice was very nice, though, honeyed, cultured, rich, no matter how cheap and obvious her words were.

Here's a workable link.

I'm annoyed by the common assertion, made perhaps for the sake of fairness, that left and right are equally irrational. It really isn't true. Altemeyer calls the authoritarian tendency "right wing" for a reason.

#120, Albatross, for example:

The safety and desirability of nuclear power, evolutionary psychology arguments about the origin of sex roles, the race/IQ correlation, differences in aptitudes between women and men, all are areas where I've seen a fair number of liberals react to factual questions and attempts to answer them with about the same rationality that the Fallwells and Robertsons use when dealing with evolution

EvPsych and the distribution of aptitudes between the sexes or the races are hardly settled science. My impression is that they're considered speculative, not capable of being answered by our current body of knowledge (and burdened with truly odious pedigrees).

The safety of nuclear power will remain an open question as long as it's in use, as will the safety of motor vehicles and medical procedures. Agriculture involving genetically modified plants is a can of worms, ecologically and economically speaking.

Note, please, that the hippie-dippy types opposing nuclear power or genetically modified crops aren't generally denying the principles of their operation or claiming they're the work of demons, but rather arguing that their risks may well outweigh the benefits, which people of good will may dispute.

In the 80's I worked near the Marine Corp helicopter facility in Tustin, CA (presently becoming another big-box mall). There was a crash or two every year. Up the frequency of flights, add in the rigors of a desert or mountain environment, figure in a finagle factor for the deficiencies of field maintenance, and you're going to see lots of crashes.

Please note that, whether they're downed by rough use or enemy fire, they and their crews and cargo are still casualties of war.

Why are so many women led willingly up the bridal trail? The dry cleaners in my town have window displays of wedding gowns attractively boxed,
like presentations of embalmed corpses.

Laugh as you might, but I was down by the beach today, and the birds (pigeons, gulls and pelicans) were conspicuous by their absence. Those who characterize pigeons as rats with wings might count that a blessing, but I am as freaked by this as by news that bees are suddenly vanishing as well.

My back yard continues to be thronged, finches flocking to the sunflower dispenser, hummingbirds to the juice bottles, mockingbirds and crows battling, hawks swooping through to gather whom they may. We don't seem to get as many doves as we used to.

Lots of bees, too, but not many butterflies. I'd be on the verge of despair were I not always battling the depression that comes from attending an elderly parent (and waiting out this president).

Comment statistics for bad Jim on the Making Light blog

Total: 6 comments. View all these comments on a single page.