Tom King's Blog, page 14

Kale: The Vegan Hair Shirt

Since I started a website for Adventist Potluck Vegetarian cuisine (stuff you can make on Friday Kale - The "Holiness" Church of Cabbagesand take to church for potluck on Sabbath and reheat and it still tastes good), I have been the periodic target of militant vegans. These radical vegetarians find my use of eggs, cheese, milk, wheat gluten, soy products and cream of mushroom soup offensive.  Also my lack of outrage over GMOs and my failure to insist on organic products, seems to rankle...

The Soon-To-Be Lost Art of the Gentleman's Disagreement

Sometimes best friends are united by their disagreement over politics and religion. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a culture where old friends could sit on the porch and argue politics like gentlemen, share a tall cold glass of sweet tea and enjoy the back and forth of friendly verbal sparring.

One wonders who it is that has convinced us all that anyone who disagrees with us is our enemy. We live in a nation founded on the recognition that each of us is different.

We have fifty states so that y...

Scammers from the Special Hell

There was a possible woman named Leona Niemann contacted my wife on Facebook Chat today. She started out by telling Sheila she had "great news" for us. Sheila, a Facebook neophyte and very trusting soul called me to ask if I knew who this woman was. Having caught my share of scam attempts in the past, we led this person along to see if my suspicions were correct.

My wife is very kind and trusting. She doesn't have a lot of defenses against liars, cheats and swindlers. When I describe Ms. Niema...

The Vanishing Art of Conversation

There's an excellent post in today's "Art of Manliness" weblog called "The Power of Conversation".  The post offers up the idea that our tech has altered our conversation in ways that prevent real conversation.  I've noticed that in my own experience, especially since the early 90s as more and more people have gone online in a big way.

I grew up before texting, cell phones and blogging, but I embraced technology early, in large part because I could do all this communicating from home...

We’re Off to See the Trumpster

Is The Donald’s Hair a Mind Control Device?



My wife, Sheila, and I were talking over breakfast this morning and watching a piece about Donald Trump on PJTV on the computer. My wife turned to me and said, “Whenever I see Trump on TV, magazine covers and on the Internet news, I can NOT force my eyes from that red squirrel tail on the top of his head. I keep waiting for the squirrel to scurry down his back leaving him bald and probably completely unaware of what just happened.”
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SNL Pokes the Gun Culture Bear

Saturday Night Live took a poke at the pro-gun culture last weekend. I don't watch Saturday Night Live anymore. It stopped being funny ages ago as this video demonstrates. I knew about it because it kind of blew up on the social media site Banjohangout.  Now we have a strict, no politics or religion policy on the Banjo Hangout, but because banjo players range politically from hard left liberals like Pete Seeger to serious conservatives like that kid from "Deliverance", it's kind of hard...

So Who Owns the Rain?

Gary Harrington, of Jackson County, Oregon was jailed and fined a couple of years ago for collecting rainwater. In court, Oregon officials declared unequivocally that rainwater is considered the "property of the state." Libertarians, conservatives and more than a few permaculturists (sustainable gardening/farming enthusiasts) are outraged. As it turns out they are more outraged by the government claiming to own the rain that falls on your property than they are by Mr. Harrington's treatment,...

The Instinct to Help is Hardwired Into Us

This story of Derby the Dog proves, at least to my satisfaction, that God made us after all, despite what the survival-of-the-fittest evolutionary model claims to the contrary.  It illustrates the kindness of people toward animals and, for that matter, toward any fellow creature in trouble. There is no basis in Darwin's survival of the fittest evolutionary model for any evolved creature to do this kind of thing. We should, by all accounts, be programmed to claw our way to the top, using...

And The Ig Nobel Prize in Economics Goes To......

This year's Ig Nobel Prizes for Improbable Scientific Research were handed out Thursday night at Harvard. The top winners were an International effort that managed to partially unboil an egg and a couple of physicists that determined that all mammals empty their bladders in 21 seconds (Dr. Raston's drunk Uncle Larry was excluded as an outlier in the data collection process). The guys that won the Literature prize, won for a study that proved that every human language has the word "huh" i...

The Best Medicine for ADHD Ever....

Teacher's these days really struggle with ADHD kids. They don't sit still, they're easily distracted they don't obey orders and they have far too much energy. Little wonder teachers want to drug them. Some say ADHD is an imaginary mental disorder. Some say, "These kids just need a belt applied to their hindquarters."

As an ADHD kid myself, I can tell you what these kids need and that ain't it. What they need is time. Modern educators and parents have convinced themselves that because kids can...