Hey wanna see a neat party trick?

Next time somebody sidles up to you at a party and challenges you to prove your consciousness isn't an illusion, you can tell them this:

Consciousness is not subject to eliminative reduction; i.e., you can't call it an illusion less than consciousness, because the illusion of consciousness is consciousness.

If you consciously believe you are conscious, then you are. See? 

Now we're hanging out with Descartes, mon ami. Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I am.

Ta da … Whip it out at your next fete or fiesta, and think of me.

For further fun reading, check out the neural correlate of consciousness. Good old NCC, it's a hoot.

Don’t I concoct some cool titles for my posts? I’m surprised I don’t get more comments just for my great titles. That Pulitzer for clever blogging is just beyond my grasp!

Anyway, Wolfowitz has finally resigned — or announced he’s going to — and I say he has it coming. I never got my toaster oven, or my checks with 4 different pictures of dolphins. That’s no way to run a bank, dammit.

Oh, and I just thought of a cool name for a punk band:

John Ashcroft’s Inflamed Pancreas.

Yolanda King has died.. She was 51.

She was an actress, author, producer, advocate for peace and nonviolence, who was known and loved for her motivational and inspirational contributions to society,’ the King family said in a statement.

Lots of people think they’re charitable if they give away their old clothes and things they don’t want. It isn’t charity to give away things you want to get rid of and it isn’t a sacrifice to do things you don’t mind doing.

-Myrtle Reed, author (1874-1911)

We have previously established here that The Shrub suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He’s deluded, quite mad. Maybe we’re all mad here, but setting that aside, he needs to be heeled to the curb before he craps in our national mess kit again. He ought to be stopped before he starts another immoral, unfounded, illicit war … this time in Iran.

As this article at Mother Jones explains, the Congress need to start doing their homework, close the loopholes in the authorizations for war they gave Shrub after 9/11, and – rhetorically speaking – learn to treat the House on the other end of the avenue as enemy combatants in the fight for peace.

You can hang me in a bottle like a cat
Let the crows pick me clean but for my hat
Where the wailing of a baby
Meets the footsteps of the dead
We’re all mad here

— Tom Waits

Son of Professor Opposed to War is Killed in Iraq

BOSTON – Boston University professor Andrew J. Bacevich has been a persistent, vocal critic of the Iraq war, calling the conflict a catastrophic failure. This week, the retired Army lieutenant colonel received the grim news that his son had been killed on patrol there.

 First Lieutenant Andrew J. Bacevich , 27, of Walpole, died Sunday in Balad of wounds he suffered after a bomb explosion, the military said yesterday. The soldier, who graduated from BU in 2003 with a degree in communications, is the 56th service member from Massachusetts to be killed in Iraq.

His father, a veteran of the Vietnam and Gulf wars, has criticized the war in his writings and described President Bush's endorsement of such "preventive wars" as "immoral, illicit, and imprudent."

TV evangelist Jerry Falwell dies at 73 – Yahoo! News

He did more than anyone else to turn Christianity in America from a religion of compassion to a dark force of political self-righteousness. I pray that he receives infinite mercy, despite his stalwart denial of even simple tolerance for the disenfranchised among us. And despite the fact that, throughout his long and myopic career, he never in my opinion made the slightest effort to focus the thoughts of his flock on the image of Christ.

One cannot look at the “morality” of people like Falwell without remembering The Lord’s parable of the Publican and the Pharisee:

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.
I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Gospel of Luke, 18:10-14

That being said, I am sorry for the loss his family and friends undoubtedly suffer. May God comfort them. There endeth the lesson.

Here's something cool which maybe you didn't know.

Look up at the top of the window, above the title of my blog, Gull Tilting. A little left of center, you'll see the words Next Blog. If you click that, you'll go to another blogspot blog, at random. It's sort of like shuffling songs on your iPod. Just keep clicking it, and checking out random blogs.

Some blogspot blogs are not in English. Who knew blogging was so popular in Germany and The Netherlands?  But they might have pictures of cute children and puppies, so what the hay. Some have big color pictures of what strange people think is good food. They're a little gross, in my opinion. I don't need to see what you're eating, really close up. Just eat it, OK?

Try not to have a Monday too much.

Over at Nothing but Love/golfblogger, we read that the cost of an annual pass to Glacier National Park has been increased to $50.

Now I have some opinions about this, excuse me very much.

I’ve always believed that public lands should be free to the public. Here in my neck of the woods, folks have been known to protest this very issue. And I think a state fishing license should be free for anyone in the state in which they live and pay taxes. I’m more than happy to pay as a guest in another state. My logic is self-evident, yes?

Hunting licenses shouldn’t be required at all. Hunting should be illegal, except for Native Americans, on Tribal lands. And don’t tell me it’s a sport. It’s a savage, pointless, stupid anachronism. It’s not a sport unless both sides know they’re in the game and have an equal chance to win.

Ooh, here’s a better idea: proxy hunters to play this “sport” for the animals. While the hunters are hunting for animals, an equal number of people are hunting the hunters, on behalf of the animals. So if I say, “I play for the bears,” you can take it literally. No, you can’t switch sides. And yes, points would be given to both sides for the quickest, most humane kill. That would be so very interesting, don’t you think? It’s made for television!

Reminds me of an old joke.

Two guys are hunting in the woods. They hunt all day, and don’t find any game. At dusk, they’re tired and having drifted a short distance apart, they’re crunching through the brush. In his exhaustion, one man accidentally shoots the other.

He rushes his buddy to the hosptial.

He sits in the waiting room, reading Field & Stream.

In a short time, the doctor comes out, looking grave.

“How’s my friend, doctor?”

“Well, he’s dead. But he might have made it. We might have saved him, if you hadn’t field dressed him and strapped him to the hood of your pickup.”

and what they did on Ocean Beach, San Francisco, 4/28/2007.

IMPEACH NOW!

http://www.bodiescount.org/

There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham.

– Anna Sewell, writer (1820-1878)

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy really. The big cheese is having one of those weeks that most of us can’t help but relate to. (With?) I mean, I can relate. Mama said there’d be weeks like this.

But even George the Lesser’s mama couldn’t have predicted how this one would go down.

Tuesday, W got his lunch eaten for him by members of his own party. They dropped by to tell him that the war is a serious political downer for the GOP, that people in their districts are mentally prepared for defeat there, and that somebody needs to admit to US that Iraq is hosed. And it can’t be the Shrub, because he’s lost credibility. [Paging Petraeus — is there a general in the house?]

“Davis, a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, also presented Bush dismal polling figures to dramatize just how perilous the party’s position is, participants said. Davis would not disclose details, saying the exchange was private. Others warned Bush that his personal credibility on the war is all but gone.” [Washington Post]

Wednesday Bush was in Kansas, bringing spiritual comfort to those effected by the terrible tornadoes there. And I imagine he feels like he’s been through a twister himself, facing the immediate resignation of his best war buddy, Tony Blair. This development really surprised me. Maybe I missed some foreshadowing in the news. Wow.

Prime Minister Tony Blair announces when he will step down on Thursday, 10 years after winning power in what was hailed as a new dawn for Britain that has since been darkened by the Iraq war.

Blair, U.S. President George W. Bush’s closest ally over Iraq, leaves office out of favor among voters for sending British forces to join the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. [Yahoo! News]