In God We Trust........Why?

O.k., I know that these are coming out erratically, but between home life and work, I work on the blog as I'm able, but seeing as not many people are reading these, eh it's alright.  I kid.  Everyone that reads these is important, especially if it opens them up to the skeptical community.  I do realize that for the most part, I'll be preaching to the choir, pun intended, but if one person is on the fence and I'm able to help them step away from relying on superstitions and rituals when making decisions, then effort is worth it. I know right now, It is a poor shadow of some of the other bloggers out there, but I hope that as I become more comfortable with the medium (or large) I'll come into my own.  It is easier for me to stand up in front of a group of 200 people I've never seen and deliver a speech or answer questions than to type what's in my head. 

Todays topics range from fungi to baboons (always a good subject) to the Oklahoma legislative body.  It's a more laid back post and hopefully a chance for some fun and a bit of a rant about the seperation of church and state (literally the state). And I hope it stimulates some discussions, especially the one about baboons.  (Notice I didn't say which baboons)

Several items caught my eye this week, the first one is that Oklahoma is one step closer to having a state motto.  Anyone care to guess what it is?  You in the front..., yeah you with the I love Picard shirt...nice try and  I thought it was "Oklahoma is ok" too, but I guess not.  No, they are trying to adopt "In God we Trust"  Seriously people.  Why the hell do we need a state motto?  And how much time has our state legislature wasted on this?  And what about followers of Buddha, or Allah, or Gilgamesh, or Odin, or The Flying Spaghetti Monster (my personal favorite)?  Which god do they mean?  What about those of us that follow no god, but use our own common sense and code of ethics to do what is right?  Also, isn't that phrase already in use by the U.S. Treasury, which, by the way, did not put that on paper money until 1957.  Between that, the attempted work around of international law concerning Islamic sharia law, and a few tirades by a certain state rep, who shall remain nameless (her initials are S.K. and rhymes with alley burn) it seems that Oklahoma doesn't want you here unless you are white, christian, straight (or at least so far in the closet, you run the risk of ending up in Narnia) and preferably wealthy.  I love this state, but sometimes the governing body makes me want to slam my head into a wall until my personal reality matches theirs.  I don't think the wall will hold up that long. 

Another cool item I heard was that a company in New York, I think, is developing a way to use mushrooms as packing material.  And they are basically mycelium, a type of fungus.  The link is http://www.ted.com/talks/eben_bayer_are_mushrooms_the_new_plastic.html  It's about 9 minutes, but still interesting, plus the TED site has a lot of other interesting videos of innovative ideas, mostly environmental and energy based.

And that last item that I found this week comes to us courtesy of Penn's Sunday School and I found the video on Youtube. The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I7-SADai3Y   Basically, a tribe, pride, caucus (whats the term for a herd of baboons?) or whatever you want to call it, of baboons living in a dump in Saudi Arabia are stealing feral pups from the packs of feral dogs also living there.  They then domesticate them and accept them into their cliche.  The dogs watch over the baboons at night like guard dogs and will even protect it's simian foster family from other dogs.  Pretty frickin wild, and brings a couple of questions to mind that I found out today, can upset fundamentalists.  If apes can domesticate other animals for their use, and chimps have been known to fashion and use weapons, how long until they have their own Starbucks and Gap?

Started reading Richard Dawkins "The Greatest Show on Earth", and I will let people know what I think of it.  Also, a couple of lovely people let me know that my initial posts contained several grammatical errors and I had omitted a letter in the "about" section.  I hopefully have those fixed, but more than likely, this one added to to overall total # of errors, and for that I'm truly sorry, but I have a tendency to write like I speak, including forgetting the occasional parenthesis.  But the language so far hasn't been as salty as I usually get when I'm emotional involved in something, but doing this blog for me is kinda like meeting someone in person.  I don't just drop F-bombs right off the bat.  I usually wait until the second sentence before that happens. Until next time, be reasonable, be fair, and be good.

The Skeptical Okie
James