We’ll be discussing this story Tuesday night. Study up.

Leigh and I have been looking for a house, and we’ve seen almost thirty homes in two days. I’m terrified we’ll end up with something like this:

I also don’t understand why people put fireplaces in homes in San Antonio, Texas. For God’s sake, I used our heater exactly one week this year, and that was mainly because I didn’t want the pipes to freeze. Most homes have a fireplace as the center piece of the living room. Don’t people know that location should be reserved for the 60 inch plasma screen? What are we, cavemen? I have no desire to build a fire in the middle of my home. It’s called central heat and air, people. This is the 21st century. Come…enjoy our technological luxuries.

Last Wednesday in Austin, Texas, employees at the Austin Women’s Health Center found a bag in their parking lot, which contained a cooler that anyone can buy at their local Wal-Mart. Inside that cooler they found a propane tank attached to a long piece of pipe that was filled with a couple of pounds of nails. A timer was attached to the pipe, and potassium nitrate, which is used to make gunpowder, and sugar, had been combined to produce a fuel sufficient enough to produce a blast capable of covering a one hundred foot radius.

I-35 was shut down, the Health Center was evacuated, and the bomb was deactivated safely. Thankfully, no one was injured.

This is less than an hour away from me, folks. Scary.

Police have arrested and charged Paul Ross Evans with the crime. Peliminary FBI investigation has shown that Evans charged the materials used in assembling the bomb at a local Wal-Mart, and a Wal-Mart employee has corroborated with that evidence.

Here’s the Austin Statesman’s story.

This, my friends, is terrorism. Now, if this man had been a dark-skinned Muslim I’m pretty sure that authorities would have rounded up all radical, and probably non-radical, Muslims in the Austin area for questioning. The authorities would have scrutinized every Islamic group in Austin, and they would have focused heavily on those groups that had ever made any violent remarks, regardless if those groups were associated with the bomber.

What do you want to bet that groups in Austin that have made violent remarks towards abortion clinics won’t be investigated in the same manner? I’ve heard and read some violently disgusting things come out of the mouths of “Christian” groups here in Texas in regards to abortion clinics and the people that work in them, but dollars to donuts those people won’t have to answer question one.

We’ll chalk this guy up to a lone crazy, and go on about our business.

• The Landlord
  Watch Will Ferrell’s altercation with his heartless landlord, Pearl.
• You can laugh at anything…even rape.
  Don’t believe me? Then read this story. It’s about rape, and it you aren’t laughing by the end of it then you probably shouldn’t be reading my blog.

In literary criticism there are many schools of thought on how to interpret and analyze texts. New Criticism, a school of literary thinking that began in the early 1900’s, emphasis a “close reading” of literary texts. New Critical scholars will stress the importance of the text itself, and eschew all external elements, especially the biography of the author, that might interfere with close readings. One of the major contributions of New Criticism to literary scholarship as a whole is the notion of the “intentional fallacy.”

Intentionally fallacy refers to the practice of critics futilely determining to discover the “intentions” of the author through the text. This, New Critics say, is a fallacious endeavor. We can never know for sure what an author had in mind for his or her text, and texts are not necessarily an expression of the author’s mind. As Terry Eagleton writes in his book Literary Theory, to attempt to offer statements regarding the author or the authors emotional state via the author’s text “reduces all literature to a covert form of autobiography: we are not reading literary works as literary works, simply as second-hand ways of getting to know somebody” (41).

Unfortunately for us, not many journalists or political pundits know about intentional fallacy. If they did, we wouldn’t see so many jackasses proposing that the writing instructors at Virginia Tech should have known that Cho Seung-Hui was a nutty-nutbag from reading his ultra-violent plays “Richard McBeef” and “Mr. Brownstone.” Sure, those plays might have been good indicators, but as intentional fallacy teaches us, the writings of an author cannot be used to determine the author’s intended meaning for his or her writings, or to determine the psyche of the author.

Apparently the creative writing instructor at Cary-Grove High School in Cary, Illinois had never heard of intentional fallacy, either. If the instructor had, perhaps Allen Lee, an 18 year-old straight-A student, wouldn’t have been arrested for writing a “disturbing” paper for a creative writing assignment. In the assignment, the students were told to express themselves emotionally, and despite the fact that Lee’s essay didn’t threaten anyone, the police in Cary, Illinois, arrested Lee and charged him with a misdemeanor, which could carry a $1,500 fine.

Everyone needs to clam down about writing students. There are some totally demented and disturbing texts out there in library-land that were written by well-adjusted and sweet authors. Not every author that writes disturbing material is destined to shoot up a school. As a teacher, I would have found Cho’s practice of signing his name as a question mark, his refusal to speak, and his instances of stalking female students far more disturbing than his writing.

• Nunchaku News
  So does this mean the UK will ban nunchucks in the future?
• Nathan Petrelli for Congress
  “Welcome to the Nathan Petrelli for Congress campaign site. Through this site, you can learn about me, the issues facing our district, and how you can become a part of the campaign.”
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  The ones for Shawshank Redemption and Freddy Got Fingered are particularly good.
• Why won’t this damn thing explode?
  Let’s see…maybe if I whap it across this tree stump a few times……….

• Headgear With Liquid
  I hate to say it, but this is even too nerdy for me.
• Oh sweet, sweet irony.

Scientists recently discovered a planet 120 trillion miles away that they speculate may be habitable for human beings, and could very well already have some kind of life flourishing on it. They dubbed this new planet “581 c,” thus proving once again that pocket-protectors severely inhibit poetic creativity.

The planet is also much closer to its sun than our planet, and unlike our sun, which is an adolescent, medium-sized sun, 581 c’s sun is a Red Dwarf. Red Dwarf’s are smaller than our sun and emit less energy. Because 581 c is closer to its sun, scientists speculate that 581 c doesn’t rotate, and one side of the planet would be in perpetual darkness. Also, it’s very possible that because of the close proximity of the sun, 581 c could be a planet that experiences tidal lock.

But calm down…don’t get too excited. We’ll never go there. How do I know? Because of this little fact: “Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth’s so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.”

We’re far too vain to voluntarily visit a planet where our weight will shoot up like that. Why do you think we keep talking about going back to the moon? I’ll tell you why: because of the moon’s weak gravitational pull we only weigh a sixteenth of our earth-weight on its surface.

Mark my words, if the obesity rate keeps going up, we’ll start seeing tourist programs to the moon popping up all over the place.

In the August 11th, 2006 edition of Science magazine, a team of scientists led by John D. Miller published their findings of a study designed to investigate Americans’ rejection of the theory of evolution. According to a recent study, only fourteen percent of Americans, or a third of all United States citizens, believes the theory of evolution to be definitely true, and more than fifty-five percent hold tentative views of evolution.

In the global community we rank second to last in acceptance of evolution, right above Turkey, but below such technologically advanced nations as Cyprus, which I thought was a flower of some sort, and Latvia, which up until now I assumed was a fictional country in the Marvel Universe ruled by the Machiavellian Doctor Doom.

Miller and his team offer three reasons to explain our rejection of evolution:

1. “First, the structure and beliefs of American fundamentalism historically differ from those of mainstream Protestantism in both the United States and Europe. The biblical literalist focus of fundamentalism in the United States sees Genesis as a true and accurate account of the creation of human life that supersedes any scientific finding or interpretation. In contrast, mainstream Protestant faiths in Europe (and their U.S. counterparts) have viewed Genesis as metaphorical and–like the Catholic Church–have not seen a major contradiction between their faith and the work of Darwin and other scientists.”

2. “Second, the evolution issue has been politicized and incorporated into the current partisan division in the United States in a manner never seen in Europe or Japan. In the second half of the 20th century, the conservative wing of the Republican Party has adopted creationism as a part of a platform designed to consolidate their support in southern and Midwestern states–the “red” states. In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in seven states included explicit demands for the teaching of “creation science.” There is no major political party in Europe or Japan that uses opposition to evolution as a part of its political platform.”

3. “Third, genetic literacy has a moderate positive relationship to the acceptance of evolution in both the United States and the nine European countries. This result indicates that those adults who have acquired some understanding of modern genetics are more likely to hold positive attitudes toward evolution. The total effect of genetic literacy on the acceptance of evolution was similar in the United States and the nine European countries.”

While I do believe that religion and politics play a major role in our rejection of evolution, I find Miller’s number three the most interesting. Basically, he’s saying that American’s don’t understand genetics on the most basic, elementary level. Miller goes on to explain that “fewer than half of American adults can provide a minimal definition of DNA.”

I’ve also read quite a few articles lately that explain that while the average American will identify his or herself as a devoted Christian, the literacy level of the average American regarding the Bible is tenuous at best. In this USAToday article, Cathy Grossman claims that “sixty percent of Americans can’t name five of the Ten Commandments, and 50% of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were married.”

Now, why would a group of people reject a fundamental scientific theory in favor of a book that they barely understand?

One word: laziness.

That’s right, I think we’re just too damn lazy to actually begin at Origin of the Species and work forward through scientific literature to understand evolution, and instead prefer the biblical account of creation over the scientific one simply because it’s easier to understand. Biological divergences…natural selection…common ancestry…damn, that’s just complicated stuff! Not to mention boring! The Bible’s version is just so much more exciting and science-fictiony, but never you mind the fact that it was never meant to be taken literally. Or that the creation narratives in Genesis were created by two different tribes of early Jews, and were later crammed together in a totally hack editing job.

Also, we’re such a group of PC-idiots that most people won’t argue with you if you refuse to do something, “because it’s against my religion.”

You might be surprised, but I fully support this willful intellectual ignorance. In fact, I’m planning on disbelieving in everything that I don’t want to waste time learning, and later blaming it on my religion. Theory of gravitation? How silly…we all know that the Flying Spaghetti Monster keeps us stuck to the ground with marinara sauce. Plate tectonics? That’s just stupid. When God spoke to the Famenites, he told them the ground was made of delicious nougat. Heliocentrism? BLASPHEMY! The internal combustion engine? Don’t be retarded. We all know that prayers power our SUVs.

As of right now, I only believe in three things: 1. Nutella and graham crackers; 2.Cold milk; 3. Napkins.

Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have finished writing this right before my snacky time, but you get the idea.