Standing athwart history, yelling $#@* !

On my way to Texas to photograph a wedding….online later today

Animal Rights

… or why animal testing researchers should be neutered Animal-rights activists both here and abroad are sometimes depicted by the media as demented hooligans, mindlessly blowing up labratories and scientists’ homes and (gasp!) releasing animals into the wild, of all places. They picket stores that sell fur coats–the horror, the horror! Okay, there is a [...]

Jerry Brown changes wording of Prop. 8 (gay marriage)

California’s Attorney General, Jerry Brown, has changed the wording of Prop. 8, a proposal by conservative groups that seeks to amend the California constitution to ban gay marriage. Brown didn’t do anything wrong, he clarified the wording, and those in favor of the ban should welcome it. Of course, it sounds nastier now, as well [...]

Obama does his own satire

So I’m reading this article on Obama, and come across this I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. The article is about comedy and Obama, [...]

Fr. Bartolomé de las Casas on the “New World”. Part I

A fascinating figure in the ‘discovery’ of the ‘New World’ is the priest Bartolomé de las Casas, who’s left us detailed accounts of what he saw during the Spaniards’ brutal conquest of the Americas. He’s featured prominently in the first chapter of Howard Zinn’s famous history book (which, in its focus on the ‘little people’ [...]