Diggapedia

  Pet peeve time. On Thursday an analysis was released by the Mayo Clinic Proceedings based on data collected by the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study regarding health effects of drinking coffee.   To the credit of the data collectors, this study looked at 40,000 people over 16 years including ages ranging from 20 to 87 years old.   Now you may have seen this in your newspapers, morning talk shows, and evening news with the headline “Drinking more than 4 cups of coffee increases mortality rate by 21%.”   Now I am fairly skeptical of these types of headlines, and chain emails too for that matter, which is why Factcheck.org and Snopes.com are web page favorites.   The problem I have with the media drawing conclusions about data and research is obvious: they need to sensationalize the story, and nothing sensationalizes like fear (greed too).   Also, I am not a statistician, but I know enough about statistical analysis to never take a news reader’s (...

  ·          Green Party: I don’t drink water from plastic bottles ·          Communist: The bourgeoisie control all of the water ·          Socialist: Is this state water? ·          Liberal: Tax the water ·          Progressive: I want safe water ·          Emoprog: Obama’s not doing enough about the water ·          Libertarian: I have the right to drink contaminated water ·          Social Conservative: Jesus blessed this water ·          Tea Partier: Guns and water ·          Republican: Who drank half my water? ·      ...

He’s back!!! Yes after several weeks, Diggapedia is back.   It wasn’t a sabbatical as much as I felt I had nothing to say, nothing to opine, and certainly nothing to rant about.   In short, it’s been pretty damn boring as I felt I had nothing else to add to the masses regarding the Trayvon Martin, Edward Snowden, or A-Rod discourse. So what brought me back? It would have to be one of three things: politics, international relationships, or religion; and the answer is religion, specifically the Lauren Green interview of Reza Aslan.    I had recently downloaded Aslan’s   Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth , when the now viral video of the interview took place on Fox. So here are my top ten opinions on religion: 1)       Your faith is your business, my freethinking is mine.   2)       Religion has its place in the public square, just not in public policy; the Wall separating churc...