What's New At Green Man Review

It's been two weeks, we've staarted a new year, but Green Man Review, as always, comes through:

All things Batman; Ritter bars and other wonderful things

And the other wonderful things really are. Click on through and settle in on this chilly Januay day.

Today in WT?

I think tihs peaks for itelf. Via Joe.My.God.:

Raw Story reports:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Monday accused Democrats of stealing elections by using completely legal methods of registering and convincing potential Democratic voters to support them. Writing on Twitter, Paul linked to an article published by the conservative Washington Examiner that detailed how Democrats flipped Wisconsin back to their side in the 2020 presidential election after narrowly losing it to former President Donald Trump in 2016

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I really am speechless. Click through to Joe's post -- there are some wonderful reactions.

What's New at Green Man Review

I remembered! The headline is very brief, so I'm just going to give yu the link and invite you to browse. Enjoy!

Speaking of Power-Hungry Hypocrites

Another bleated Christmas post, this one via Joe.My.God: T

he Christian Post reports:

The Satanic Temple of Illinois displayed a sculpture of an infant version of Baphomet in the state Capitol rotunda in Springfield Tuesday, which can be seen as “just another very sad attempt” by the devil to destroy Christmas, Graham told Fox News today.

As Joe points out in his post, the Satanic Temple is satire, generated by a group of atheists. Their website says specificially that Satan does not exist. According to Joe, Graham knows this -- but you can bet he's not going to let his followersin on the secret.

Belated Merry Christmas

Best Nativity scene ever. ourtesy o commenterPicky Pecker at Joe.My.God.

On Morality

I ranacross this post by Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist and thought it was worth commenting on. For some reason, I can't copy and paste a quote, so I suggest you follow the link and read the post, or at least the first part of it, before reading my comments.

I've thought about the issue of morality a lot recently, and come to the conclusion hat our core moral value is a product of our existence as social primates: we take care of each other, because that benefits out group, and what beneits our group benefits the individuals in the group.

This core moral imperative is one that's shared by all religions, at least, all that I've run across. It's when you have priesthoods trying to control behaviors that it starts to get murky. (Think Leviticus, which in my opinion has nothing to do with any sort of real morality -- it's a tool for controlling the community.)

So the enext time yoou hear some preacher fulminating on the imoorality of such ahd such (send money), ask them if they are devoting resources to feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, comforting the afflicated.

What's POssible

Whenn we dn't have idiots acting out all ovr the place. From NASA:

For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona – and sampled particles and magnetic fields there.

The new milestone marks one major step for Parker Solar Probe and one giant leap for solar science. Just as landing on the Moon allowed scientists to understand how it was formed, touching the very stuff the Sun is made of will help scientists uncover critical information about our closest star and its influence on the solar system.

"Parker Solar Probe “touching the Sun” is a monumental moment for solar science and a truly remarkable feat," said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Not only does this milestone provide us with deeper insights into our Sun's evolution and it's impacts on our solar system, but everything we learn about our own star also teaches us more about stars in the rest of the universe.”

As it circles closer to the solar surface, Parker is making new discoveries that other spacecraft were too far away to see, including from within the solar wind – the flow of particles from the Sun that can influence us at Earth. In 2019, Parker discovered that magnetic zig-zag structures in the solar wind, called switchbacks, are plentiful close to the Sun. But how and where they form remained a mystery. Halving the distance to the Sun since then, Parker Solar Probe has now passed close enough to identify one place where they originate: the solar surface.

There's a lot more information at the NASA link.

Via Joe.My.God.

Catching Up With Green Man Review

Did it again. Here's the latest from Green Man Review:

Mari Boine Persen live, Spidery things, Gwyneth on chestnuts and other late Autumn Matters

So click on over and enjoy.

Today in Crazy

In case you somehow manage to miss all the insanity coiming from the fringe right wing (which seems to e the only right wing that remains), here's a sample: Alex Jones, via Joe.My. God.:

So, they just think you’re stupid and they don’t want you knowing they are doing all of this, and they’ve got carbon systems they are putting in, that big, huge geoengineering systems, terraforming systems that are sucking carbon dioxide out of the air when it’s a trace gas that we need, and was hundreds of times higher millions of years ago than it is now.

That’s why plants and animals were so much bigger and healthier. But we’ve adapted to live in less air. This is insane, ladies and gentlemen. OK, so the question is did [Joe] Biden last February, this year, order the power turned off in Texas. T

hey did officially; they wouldn’t let them up the power. Now, we know that. So the question is did they use weather weapons to cause the tornadoes? That’s a legitimate question to ask.

What's depressing is that Jones actually has an augience, and they believe every word. "Weather machines"? Really?

This Time at Green Man Review

Ye, it's that time again, and there's a new edition of Green Man Review ready for you:

Books about books, murder, witches, games and more; Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library; chocolate good and meh; indie rock, Americana, jazz, Latvian, and more music including a world bagpipe omnibus

And it's all waiting for you rigt over here.

Rittenhouse Walks

Which, if you've been following reports on the trial, was pretty much predictable. There's a lot of commentary, but I suggest you check out digy's post at Hullabaloo. It's lengthy, but I found this paragraph telling:

This sort of vigilantism is routinely celebrated on the right these days. From the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida to the trial of Ahmaud Arbery’s killers now unfolding in Georgia, they have lined up in support for citizens who take the law into their own hands — as long as the targets are left-wing protesters and Black people.

Ir's being pushed by the right, but I can't quite shake the feelilng that they are willing accomplices of an overeas influence.

At any rate, check out digby's piece.

The Sparrows Are Back!

There's a flock of sparrows that roosts in a towering mulberry tree in the side yard. In the winter they move to a fairly tall juniper bush next to it -- tallenough to make them feel secure, and with very dense foliage, wihch must make it easier to stay warm.

Over the summer they disappeared. I suspect it was because of the cicadas -- we had cicadas in all the trees on my street, at least one to every tree, and the racket, starting in the afternoon and lasting throught he night, was increcible. I'm convinced that the sparrows left because they couldn't get any sleep.

At any rate, they've started coming back over the past few weeks -- I can hear them twittering their "Good night, sleep tight" chirps in the vening, and their wake-up chatter in the morning, and they've started appearing in the parkway, hopping around looking for something to eat.

It's sort of reassuring to have them back.

The Quiet Part Out Loud

This story is from yeseterdaay, soI'm playing a little bit of catch-up. Via Joe.My.God.:

In his latest journey to the edge of extreme, Donald Trump’s former National Security Adviser and felon Michael Flynn called on Saturday for a single religion in America.

“If we are going to have one nation under God — which we must — we have to have one religion,” Flynn said in San Antonio at a stop for the far-right “ReAwaken America” tour. “One nation under God, and one religion under God,” he added.

Such a vision is completely contrary to the Constitution’s guarantee of Freedom of Religion, and the separation of church and state

This, of course,is what the "religious" right has been aiming for since Reagan, and they've been very clever about it -- goig after local and sstate governments, stcking the courts and then puysing their "religious liberty" arguments as far as they could. (Consider the assault on local school boards and schools in light of stories such as this one and this one.

And lest yoou have any doubts, it's not just Christianity, it's their own nasty brand of "Christianity".

What's New at Green Man Reiew

I remembered this time, so here it is:

Mystery novels, mystery films, music of an autumnal nature, Chinese folk music, Buffy graphic novels, and lots of licorice

If your weather's anything like ours, it's a perfect day to dig in and scout out some winter readig.

We Should Have Expected This

Im sort of surprized it took this long. Via Joe.My.God.:

The Spotsylvania County School Board has directed staff to begin removing books that contain “sexually explicit” material from library shelves and report on the number of books that have been removed at a special called meeting next week. The directive came after a parent raised concerns at the School Board’s meeting Monday about books available through the Riverbend High School’s digital library app.

The board voted 6–0 to order the removal. Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the removed books burned. “I think we should throw those books in a fire,” Abuismail said, and Twigg said he wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”

The full article is here. You know who else liked to burn books? Let me refresh your memory:

On May 10, 1933, university students burn upwards of 25,000 “un-German” books in Berlin’s Opera Square. Some 40,000 people gather to hear Joseph Goebbels deliver a fiery address: “No to decadence and moral corruption!”

As part of an effort to align German arts and culture with Nazi ideas (Gleichschaltung), university students in college towns across Germany burned thousands of books they considered to be “un-German,” heralding an era of state censorship and cultural control. Students threw books pillaged mostly from public and university libraries onto bonfires with great ceremony, band-playing, and so-called “fire oaths.” The students sought to purify German literature of “foreign,” especially Jewish, and other immoral influences. Among the authors whose works were burned was Helen Keller, an American whose belief in social justice encouraged her to champion disabled persons, pacifism, improved conditions for industrial workers, and women's voting rights.

Do I really need to say more?

A Note on Blogging

Yeah, I know, it's been nonexistent for months, save for the GMR updates. Partly it's because the news is boring, but mostly it's because of my vision problems, which make it hard to work at the computer. However, I've decided that I have to give it a go, so expect peroidic posts on the news or whatever else captures my attention. Wish me luck.

There Is No Bottom

Eevery tieme you think the right can sink no lower, they find a way. Here's Dennis Preger, via Jo.My.God.

Anywhere that you have people who are governed by fear of global warming – the idiotic, irrational, sick fear of extinction of the biosphere – I mean, you understand the nonsense that we live with?

If we survive this as a free country, historians will just ask, ‘How did this happen? How did people get governed by irrational fears’?

Whether it is of the non-vaccinated, who are the pariahs of America as I have not seen in my lifetime any pariah group like this. “During the AIDS crisis, can you imagine if gay men and intravenous drug users, if had they been pariahs the way the non-vaccinated are?

The nonsense about climate cange is bad enough -- it's hardly an irratinal fear; it's a legitimate concern, especally for those who live in coastal aras, which includes most of the world's major cities. The the comments about how gay men were treated during the AIDS crisis ar simply beyond belief. Prager's left reaity in a dumpster on this one.

All this, of coure, is directed toward making heroes out of a bunch of petulant itiots with their heads full of QAnon bullshit.

The Republicsans hasve lost their freaking minds.

What's New at Green Man Review

As you might imagine, it's all about Hallowen, so click on over and immerse yourself in the holiday.

Catching Up With Green Man Review

Did it again -- missed the last edition. At any rate, here's the dope:

A Plethora of Neal Stephenson novels, Several Things of a Jethro Tull Nature, Elizabeth Bear on all things culinary, an ex-Beatle and an ex-Monkee and a bunch of Wicked Tinkers

So click on over and dig in.

This Time at Green Man Review

I actually remembered yesterday, then forgot, then remembered, and forgot againand finally left msyself a note late last night so I'd remember this morning. At any rate, here's the latest edition of Green Man Review:

Bothy Band’s “Old Hag” tune, CBGB Punxs, Hot Chocolate, Russell T Davies back as Who Showrunner and It’s Autumn!

If, like us, you're suffering through a spell of gloomy weather, it's a perfect time to click on over and ejoy.