Not Tonight, Dear, I Have A Blog Headache

• I don't think I was naive about it, exactly, when I started, and by now it's an established fact of the regular routine, like dirty dishes or five minutes of sex once a month, but the weird recursiveness of blogging, the subconscious mining of everything one comes into contact with for possible post material comes bubbling up to the surface and lodges somewhere behind my left eye.

• And then Those Other Bloggers make me do things I don't want to do, like try to hit the stop loading button after the article appears but before WaPo crashes my browser, or think about things. Yes, I'm looking at you, Robin, but also Alex (Dylan covers) and Kathy (Peaches, Lost Glory Of), just to mention three who hijacked my inner dialogue(s) in the last twenty-four hours. I'm sure you all mean well.

• In a just world, everybody at CNN would be excited that they'd gotten a mention from Norbizness.

• My neighbors went camping Saturday, which in fact means they rented a cabin somewhere rustic and drank margaritas there for a change, and left their dog at home to howl all night in their absence. But in practical terms that means we never got their hand-me-down copy of the Sunday Times, and it wasn't until this evening when I checked in with Pharyngula that I learned I'd missed a three-parter on the Great ID vs Evolution Non-Debate. And frankly, at this point I'm too tired to try to read the damn thing and the inescapable rise in blood pressure won't do me any good so close to bedtime. I did, however, read through all the comments, and you might check out the reply that PZ got from Kenneth Chang, the Timesman who wrote one of the pieces. It was good of him to take the time. Same goes for the dozens of readers who then pointed out how utterly deficient the whole faux-balance "on the other hand, scientists say..." approach is when dealing with matters of fact. Yeah. And it's also deficient when dealing with matters of politics. Chang also insisted that he was writing for a general audience and PZ's well-informed readers might lack the patience to go over well-trod ground. This is a bit like defending Judy Miller by claiming she was writing only for the gullible.

• On the other hand, the Op-Ed section printed this, a defense of something I've always believed: that the teaching of evolutionary science, in public schools and to the general public, should begin with an understanding of geologic time. Not a rote memorization of the names of epochs and eras, but a real understanding of time's vastness.

• I'm old enough to remember when Pat Robertson was just a religious nutcase. I was actually a bit surprised to see that CBS was giving his remarks some coverage, but then whatever hairdo it was they had hosting tossed it to Gloria Borger, who proceeded to say, well, you know, Pat's got a history of saying these outrageous things, and they probably bring in the cash, so it's not really like he's a kook like Cindy Sheehan or something.

• Some kitten or other managed to chew through the D string on my guitar this morning. How long ago did I take those last two aspirin?