You’ve probably noticed that blogging has slowed again.  That infection
I’ve been fighting for the last five weeks has re-emerged, and I’m
under doctor’s orders to be as flat and unconscious as possible for a
while.  No worries; I’ll be fine.  I have a guy I trust working on it, and it really should be all done soon.  Just don’t think I’ve abandoned the
blog if it just sits here for a while.

Incidentally, I’m on some shiny new meds with even more interesting possible — and (thank the FSM) unlikely — side effects than the last batch:

Well.  This could be interesting.  Bottoms up!  We’ll hope for the best.

In addition, I am to avoid aspirin, antacids, and (weirdly enough) licorice.  How odd.

I originally picked up this case of cooties, mind you, in a doctor’s office,
when I went in for a routine guy-in-his-40s health-maintenance thing. 
This is called "iatrogenic" (doctor-induced) disease, and if memory
serves, the are studies which say about 25% of all medical problems in
the United States are iatrogenic.

I’d look up the exact stat, but you have Google if you’re curious. 
Meanwhile, I have a pudu to post, some paying work I need to finish,
and then I need to be in bed.

See you in a few days with the usual litany of complaining and goofing around.

Less than 16 hours after this post, O’Reilly’s people changed his site.

Now they can pretend it never happened, and keeping acting like this phony "War On Christmas" actually exists.

Tipped by this Kos diary.

Yes, there is such a thing.  Go read.

(Who Would Jesus Beat with a Metal Object?)

Our friend Stephanie in Kansas shares the news that the professor who recently announced a course
called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and
other Religious Mythologies" has told police that he was attacked along
a rural road late last night and beaten by two men, who were quite clear that his opposition to Christian fundamentalism was the cause of the attack.

This is precisely the kind of thing that gives being vaguely
conversant with history or having the slightest ability to reason the
delicious tingle of danger.

Granted, Prof. Mirecki himself isn’t infallible, as he showed in an
email which referred to his proposed class as a "nice slap in [the
fundamentalists’] big fat face."  After the controversy — triggered
because, as we all know, most right-wing ministers are glowing paragons of health, often as skinny as supermodels — the professor
decided that the class should be cancelled out of fairness to all concerned.

I agree.  Not one televangelist I can think of has enough double-chins to give his head its own scrotum.

OK, well, one.

Actually, five.  Wait, no.  Seven.  Hmm.  Anyhow.

Naturally, there are already people on the right — I won’t dignify
them with links, but you can find them easily enough — who have
already decided that the professor staged his own attack.  Well,
certainly.  Because beating themselves up in the middle of nowhere
is the kind of thing rationalists do.

I don’t know if the local District Attorney
plans to prosecute this the same way they would if two atheists beat
the crap out of a minister, specifically for his beliefs.  But they
should.  I’m gonna send them an email in a minute and say so.

And this Kos diary suggests making a donation to Americans United for Separation of Church and State
in Prof. Mirecki’s name, as a specific show of support for him and a
deterrent to future similar attacks.  Not a bad idea.  I’m gonna go
chip in a few bucks myself.