My Sick Mind

The spinmeisters will be working overtime in McCain-ville. Every time Sarah Palin opens her mouth more junk comes out. Here are a few excerpts from her interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson: Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's assertion that she believes humans play a role in climate change — made in her first major interview since joining the Republican ticket — is at odds with her previous statements. Palin said she didn't disagree with scientists that the problem can be attributed to "man's activities." "Show me where I have ever said that there's absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change. I have not said that," Palin told ABC News in an interview broadcast Thursday and Friday . OK, since you asked: She has told the Internet news site Newsmax, " A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. ... I'm not one, ...

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. - Searching for an economic boost and home to perhaps the most compelling story of 9/11, rural Somerset County is trying to pull off a balancing act: Remembering the victims of United Airlines Flight 93 in a way that encourages development and job growth without devolving into tackiness and disrespect . I'm not sure about where you live, but around here we memorialize places where cars skid off the road and crashes occur with flowers and the occasional wooden cross. It's a morbid reminder of something horrible that happened. Now, construction is underway in the tiny town of Shanksville (heretofore a bypassed town off the Pennsylvania Turnpike) to build a memorial to Flight 93. We want to remember stuff like that, even though while we're there, we realize that we would rather forget it. Meanwhile, business in Shanksville is booming, presumably because tourists are turning off the Turnpike to gaze upon the sacred ground where the crash occurred. The idea...

It isn't easy keeping up with this. I'm moody, and for those of you old enough to remember the "Mister Ed" TV show, you'll remember the song lyric: Mister Ed will never speak unless he has something to say. That's the way it is with Mister Me. I'm not much for small talk and I don't yammer on about anything unless I feel strongly about the subject. Such has been the case lately, and whenever I'm feeling that way I know that all I need to do is turn on the TV news. So, there's CNN's Jeannie Most doing a fluff piece about Sarah Palin and the sensation that has resulted over her eyeglasses. Jeannie was in a mall showing people a photo of Palin and asking whether they liked her glasses. Most of them said yes, and one said that her glasses were the best thing about her. A backhanded compliment if ever I've heard one. As it turns out, optometrists are swamped with orders from people who want to be "Palinized". One presumes being...

I'm sitting here with Kitty beneath my feet - as usual, if you're scoring at home - and I just finished watching a TV program that said cats have almost no frontal lobe in their brains, meaning that they pretty much remember the present and recent past, and place no emphasis on what happened years ago and have no compulsary emotions other than to react to current events. If that is the case (and who am I to doubt what I see on TV?) then I suppose I can take heart in knowing that the only place the cat wants to be, based on nothing other than his base emotions, is near my feet, sleeping with his paws in the air. There's something comforting in that, and something I wish more humans had - at least the humans I'd like to have around me. Maybe we could extract a little frontal lobe from a few people? Isn't that what happened to McMurphy in "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest?" It seemed to quiet him down. The executive functions of the frontal lobes involv...

Saturday's wind and rain inspired me to grab my camera and move five feet from the sofa to the window to capture some images of the rainfall. It's the same sort of artistic inspiration that da Vinci must have felt before he painted that ceiling in Rome just prior to drinking himself into a coma and collapsing in a heap. Later, I spread my arms and discovered that a man's reach equals his height. I'll draw it up later. Think about how the world would have changed if da Vinci had a Nikon D40. Born as the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci and a peasant woman Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo's ideas were vastly ahead of his time. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics . Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin ...