I’ve known that the tobacco (aka cigarette) industry was evil incarnate since I was a teenager in the mid 1970’s. I’ve watched the movie “The Insider” a couple of times. After watching that movie I though tobacco companies had been defanged. So I was appalled to learn that tobacco companies like Phillip Morris International (PMI) are actively suing entire countries for implementing common sense labeling laws about the danger of smoking tobacco.

This short (five minute) Youtube video about eye contact and intimacy almost made me cry. This is the summary for the video: Studies say that 4 minutes of uninterrupted eye contact can increase intimacy. To test this this theory out, we brought in six pairs in different stages of their relationship and had them try it. How do you stay connected? Check out the NYT article that inspired the video: http://nyti.

Do you care whether Comcast, Time-Warner, AT&T or whichever company provides your Internet connection can make it difficult for you to visit the web sites you like rather than the ones which make them more profit? You should. Please take a minute to tell your legislators that they should support net neutrality. If the big ISPs get what they want you may find that some site you enjoy is so slow that it might as well not even exist.

Update 2015-03-07: Thanks to Evi Vanoost for pointing out that inserting the USB wireless receiver while holding down the Logitech button on the gamepad will cause it to be recognized by Mac OS X, provisioned with power, and once again be usable in Steam games. I had been happily using the wireless Logitech F710 game controller with Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.1 (and OS X Mavericks before that) in the Steam game “XCOM: Enemy Within” for several months.

Okay, climate change is unlikely to directly kill me. But it seems highly likely to indirectly kill me or at least make my life unpleasant. San Francisco broke an unfortunate record last month: In another sign California’s persistent drought, downtown San Francisco recorded no measurable rain in January for the first time in 165 years. The National Weather Service also said Santa Cruz recorded no rain in January for the first time since 1893.

Independent film festival Cinequest 2015 is about to begin. I gorged myself last year by buying a “Film Lovers Pass” and seeing three movies a day over ten days. I intend to repeat the experience this year. Yes, a couple of the films I watched don’t deserve to even go “straight to video“. But that was the rare exception. I would recommend most of the films I watched. And a few I watched last year deserve widespread theatrical release.

The measles outbreak that originated at Disneyland has sparked a lot of much needed discussion about the rights of parents with irrational fears and their ability to put everyone at risk of serious illness and death. Surprisingly even some far-right Republicans such as Ben Carson, a US President aspirant, are taking sensible stances on vaccination: Although I strongly believe in individual rights and the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit, I also recognize that public health and public safety are extremely important in our society.

I love Stephen Fry and would marry him if we were compatible in physical and not just intellectual ways. In this video Fry stuns the famous Gay Byrne on Irish television and provides some rational thoughts about God: [https://www.youtube.com/embed/-suvkwNYSQo?feature=oembed] Fry’s response that the Christian god is capricious, mean minded, and stupid is obvious to anyone with an open mind. His comparison of the Christian god to the Greek gods was spot on.

I wrote a post back in December 2014 about the surprising volume of attacks on my WordPress blog from computers located in Italy. I’m writing this article to document that the attacks have reached a new level. As of today 5.1% of the computers in the 93.61.72.0/21 subnet (104 of 2048) have attacked my WordPress blog. Not even China has a subnet with 2048 computers wherein one in twenty has attacked my site.

Dr. Jerry Coyne in this post at Why Evolution is True on the religious views of author Dan Brown has coined a new aphorism that resonated with me: Sometimes I think I could make a good living by just parroting the warm, comfortable bromides of people like Brown. It still amazes me, though, even after all these years, that smart people can say such dumb things. I’d paraphrase Steven Weinberg by saying, “With or without religion, smart people will say smart things and dumb people will say dumb things.