Reason trumps religion, even in Bible Belt, at times

Out here in Odessa, Texas, aka Bushville with a capital B (he grew up 20 miles east, in Midland) a man was convicted of Murder 1 today, with the jury deliberating just 20 minutes over the guy asphyxiating his wife.

The religion part? He said it was accidental while trying to exorcise a demon from her, that he demon did leave her ... and entered him.

ESPN's Scoop Jackson should move past dime-store sociology

ESPN's resident raceologist claims that reaction to Brett Favre's repeated retirement dances has been nothing compared to fan reaction to LeBron James' "Decision."

Bull. Scoop occasionally has good things to opine, but, more and more, he seems to be playing a character with a shtick. Jason Whitlock has smacked him down far better than I could, but has probably gotten tired of it.

Fact is, Favre never strung Green Bay out the way James did Cleveland. The full-blown retirement dances only came later. Ditto on undercutting coaches.

Is there no racism involved with white reaction to James? Of course not. And, someone like Whitlock would say the same. But, is it the primary driver? No.

As for blacks rallying around James, that's another issue, and arguably a problem itself. Scoop, if you want to move above the dime-store level of sociology of racial issues, try tackling that.

Beyond that, if you'll pardon the pun, race issues in general aren't always black and white; they're certainly not in this case.

Why "Planet Goldilocks" likely isn't

All the science stories in the last 24 hours have been touting the alleged "Planet Goldilocks" as the first outside our solar system compatible for life similar to ours.

Fact one - its revolution and rotation are synchronous, so that it eternally turns the same face to its home star. At a distance of just 19 million miles, then sunlit side is getting fried more than Mercury. And, unless it has a thick enough atmosphere, the star-based side is chilling. That said, it would also be a fine line between "just enough" atmosphere to keep the dark side warmed up a bit, and so thick an atmosphere that you get Venerean effects.

Besides, if the atmosphere is that thick enough, that close to the home star, with that short of a revolutionary period, what sort of storms might be generated?

Beyond that, we're talking massive solar wind that close to the home star, with a planet that might well not have enough magnetic field to keep the planetary surface from heavy bombardment.

So, Goldilocks it ain't.

Atheists know the bible better than Christians

Nope, no joke. (And, like other atheists, no, I'm not surprised, either.)

And, some of the results are just sad, for the people involved, that is. 45 percent of American Catholics, on the Eucharist, apparently think their church is Reformed, for example.

Here's why I think this is like this. Usually a convert has fuller knowledge than a lifelong adherent. Since Christians are a much bigger pool than atheists and agnostics, and also atheists and agnostics who "convert" to that want to know what they're converting from ...

Several new Amazon reviews are up

One of the best books I've read on the folly of believing that economic "engagement" with China will make it more democratic, "The Beijing Consensus," was very good. Read what I thought about it and other books.

God's running out of money ...

Or, at the least, the entities that serve him are. And, no, it's not just the liberal mainline Protestant bodies It's evangelical churches of various stripes. And, it's not even churches, it's synagogues, too. (No word in the story on mosques, Hindu temples, etc.)

And, no, it's not the recession, either. Or not primarily.

It's two things.

One is the aging of baby boomers. As they retire, they cut back on giving of all sorts.

The second is, below the upper end of the baby boom, the ongoing decline in emotional and psychological investment in authoritative institutions of all sorts.

“When the foundation falls, when the base isn’t there, then you have problems,” said Elbert T. Chester, an accountant in Queens who has more than 60 churches along the Eastern Seaboard as clients. “And we haven’t even seen the worst of it.”

Don't expect this to change. Baby boomers aren't getting any younger, and the tail end of boomers, Gen Xers and younger yet, aren't gaining in enthusiasm for organized religion or even semi-organized spirituality.

Add in the Catholic priests' sexual abuse, more and more Protestant ministers getting flagged for the same, more and more ministers from conservative backgrounds getting exposed as gays (and perverted ones within their repressed sexuality), and you have even more reason for the trend to continue.

For Xns or Jews worried about "American sharia"

Substitute "halaka" for "sharia" and this is what you get. "Halaka communities," already in existence.