[Author's note: This piece was originally submitted to American Thinker but they rejected it because McCain died last August. Normally, I spike articles that were rejected, but McCain IS back in the news, and people seem to have forgotten his full history. I haven't, and I thought this piece deserved to see the light of day. On the other hand, maybe I'm not as clever as I think. If you like this article, please share it with your friends. If not (if you think Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave right now), please leave a comment advising me not to write this sort of blog post ever again.] Senator John McCain (official portrait) Friends, Republicans, fellow Americans: lend me your ears. I come here to bury John McCain, not to praise him. Quite frankly, he doesn’t deserve praise. His Senate colleagues have decreed that we cannot speak ill of the dead, and John McCain is dead. Senator Johnny Isakson (for whom I voted) proclaimed the late senator a hero and said, “Anyone who tarnishes the reputation of John McCain deserves a whipping.” Senator Mitt Romney (for whom I once voted) described John McCain as “heroic, courageous, patriotic, honorable, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, empathetic, and driven by duty to family, country, and God.” However, the evil that men do lives after them, and Senator McCain was an ambitious man. He wasn’t merely content to be a senator from Arizona and one of the most powerful people in the United States; McCain wanted to be the most powerful, the President of the United States. He ran for that office … [Read more...]
Quantum memories
Michaela Chatterjee A pleasant family vacation ended abruptly with an unpleasant outcome for seventeen-year-old Michaela (Roser) Chatterjee. In the blink of an eye, a relaxing drive back home turned into a horrific car accident, followed by the chaotic scramble of a life flight via helicopter to emergency surgery. Another driver had panicked at the sight of oncoming traffic while trying to pass on a hill and smashed into the family vehicle, forcing them under the trailer of an eighteen wheeler. Three medical evacuation helicopters and five ambulances were called to the scene. Michaela’s injuries were by far the most serious. Her facial wounds looked particularly gruesome. A deep laceration extended across her forehead and ripped into her right eyelid, exposing two inches of skull and her eyeball. Her bicep was completely severed when her left arm smashed through the rear windshield. As a result, Michaela had gone into shock. The force of impact had been so great that she suffered a diffuse axonal injury to her brain, meaning her brain literally sheared and twisted inside her cranium, creating a blood clot. Fortunately for Michaela, the accident occurred only two miles from the personal residence of emergency room physician Scott Magley. He arrived at the scene and began administering first aid. Michaela flat lined on the flight to the hospital despite Dr. Magley’s best efforts to save her. Michaela was so badly injured that Dr. Magley was able to intubate her without anesthesia. Due to the severity of her brain injury, she remained … [Read more...]
Internet censorship
I just finished conducting a simple experiment that produced some pretty interesting results, in my opinion. I typed the name of my website (southern prose) into the Google search engine and checked the results. As expected, three of the first four search results were "me" -- either a link to an article, the website homepage, or the author bio page. Enclosing the search criteria in quotation marks didn't appear to have any impact on the results. No smile for the mug shot, Jussie? Then I began repeating the experiment, while doing my best to apply the scientific method. I added the name of my friend and guest contributor Frank Boccia to the search criteria, noting that the results only changed slightly when quotation marks were used around "southern prose". Instead of the top three results matching my website, Google now found four unique articles. A slight improvement. Over a number of iterations, the search results were fairly consistent...as I'd think of another subject or guest contributor at www.southernprose.com and modify the search criteria, at least one article from my website matching the criteria would inevitably show in the search results, as my queries correctly matched and located articles about Rose Kopp, P. Z. Myers and Hector Avalos and consistently listed them in the top two matches. When I substituted the name of the world's most hysterical climate alarmist, Google even found an old article about hate crimes that wasn't even about Al Gore, but merely made a brief reference to him. And when I added famed atheist Richard Dawkins to the search … [Read more...]
Jussie Smollett’s hate crime
I'm not a big fan of the term "hate crime" because the definition of one is vague and nebulous at best, obfuscating and confusing at worst. The term "hate crime" suggests that certain crimes should be judged and punished more harshly depending on the motive of the perpetrator. Jussie Smollett Theoretically, the criminal act is considered worse if racism, homophobia, or some other prejudice is the primary motive. But is that really true? Even if it is true, why should it matter? Let's say person "A" murders person "B" in some heinous manner, let's say by nailing them to a tree--is the crime really worse if the perpetrator and victim are of different races or have different sexual preferences? Personally, I wouldn't really care too much one way or the other even if the perpetrator and victim were different species. I'd care that a living creature had been nailed to a tree for no justifiable reason. In my opinion, there is something seriously wrong with a human being who would torture an animal or a person and take pleasure from watching them suffer. Someone that evil shouldn't be allowed to live. Jussie Smollett hates President Donald Trump so much that he paid two black men $3,500 (unfortunately for him paid by check, leaving a paper trail) to "attack" him with bleach, claiming they were Trump supporters shouting "Make America Great Again" and racist, homophobic slurs. His t-shirt says it all, doesn't it? Smollett caused the city of Chicago to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars paying the police to waste hundreds of man-hours investigating a … [Read more...]
A Universe from Nothing
Not long ago I was having a conversation with an atheist acquaintance on social media about the origin of the universe and my friend suggested "nobody" believes there was ever a time when literally nothing existed. Naturally, my response was something along the lines of "Oh, really?" and I posted the Amazon link to physicist Lawrence Krauss' book A Universe From Nothing, the title of which would seem to refute his claim. photo by REUTERS/Leah Millis Curiously, he asked if I'd read the book (as if I'm in the habit of recommending books I didn't write nor haven't read). I didn't bother explaining that I'd first read the book approximately six years ago and had written a review published as the Atlanta Creationism Examiner for the now-defunct Examiner.com website. I briefly entertained the idea of simply republishing the original article here at my website, but that review seemed dated, so I decided not to re-post it. Then, out of the blue, another atheist acquaintance in yet another "discussion" forum posted the link to another six-year-old review of Krauss' book by David Albert, returning it to the forefront of my mind. Which brings us here. Technically speaking, my atheist friend's argument had been correct in the sense that physicists and cosmologists have explained prior to the creation of our universe, time did not exist because it had no means to measure it, given that our measurements for time are exclusively defined by the universe. Thomas Aquinas famously suggested that our universe began with time, not in time. God created the universe literally ex … [Read more...]
