ThinkingSkull.com

Jeeves is dead. AskJeeves.com is now Ask.com.

Why is it that when anyone with a pro-supernatural presupposition mentions the old craft, spells, “Indian medicine,” spirits, witchboards, pentagrams, and generally anything that intentionally rubs elbows with things considered occult, people often become very uncomfortable? For high science intellectuals, some of the theories of telepathy, telekinesis, possession, and precognition dip into the realm of almost-there but not-quite-proven. For the devout, even the desire to investigate such things is the gateway to control and being controlled, to being lost and finally damned. And while everyone still giggles when the unexplained happens, there’s an eerie silence that follows as everyone wonders what could really be.

Is it human imagination? Is it a sense of actual soul or spirit? The feeling that you’re not alone when no one’s around or that forces are influencing your daily activities, is there something ancient stored in genetic memory lingering as a reminder that life used to have simpler answers before humans complicated things the way they always do?

For now, I think I’ll just have a cookie.

To quote an interview on Live Science:

I think science has always been under assault to some extent. I think there are fashions in cycles in which science is attacked for a period of time and is embraced for a period of time and it’s attacked again. Generally attack against science is part of a greater attack against intellectualism in general. I think right now we’re in an anti-intellectual period in the United States, but I think the pendulum will swing back in the other direction again. I agree with you that we’re not seeing anything now that hasn’t happened in earlier centuries.

That sounds about right. I myself recall being a “rebel” in church for questioning scripture with something so evil as “logic,” but there are plenty of researchers out there staring into microscopes and telescopes hoping to see the eye of the Supreme Being looking back.

And the swing is already coming like an axe blade as the younger generation not only uses new technology but has a greater understanding of it over their elders. Can you imagine an Arthurian Knight in a Connecticut Yankee’s court? “The magic that makes our cellphones work is called a ‘Network,’ but we have to shut them off in here because the Judge said so.”

Get a new car for your spouse. It’ll be a great trade!

A baby seal walks into a club.

Citizen: Hey, do you know there’s a Patriot Act in your docket?

Politician: It keeps the terrorists away.

Citizen: But there hasn’t been an attack in over four years!

Politician: See? It’s working!

Why are producers having such a hard time casting the new Bond Babe/Villain in their new film? Just go into any “Sephora” Make-Up Store, pick out a cutie, and they’re already dressed like supervillains at no extra charge (all black, tight-collars with that lithe-yet-evil silver ‘S’ symbol). Who needs SPECTRE when women everywhere give you money to look beautiful? And the rest of the store’s staff can be her Minions…!

… why does every “Cheesecake Factory” restaurant look more like Queen Nefertiti’s bathhouse instead of anything resembling a factory?