Reading Time: 3 minutes Last week I saw a live performance by Ira Glass. If you have not seen his stage show “7 Things I’ve Learned” and intend to, consider this a spoiler alert. Everyone probably knows Ira Glass from his immensely popular public radio program “This American Life,” which he has hosted and produced since the mid-1990s. How many […]

J. H. McKenna
J. H. McKenna (Ph.D.) has taught the history of atheism and other classes since 1999 at the University of California, where he has won teaching awards. He has published in academic journals and the LA Times, Huffington Post, and Patheos. He created ‘UponReligion.com’ to feature his writing projects and the Youtube channel ‘Five Finger Fingerstyle Guitar' for his original guitar pieces. His spouse is a professor of Medieval Japanese theater at the University of California.
Señorita pistols and the amendment after the First
Reading Time: 3 minutes The text of an upcoming speech by Senator Burlo Winchester—an advocate of the amendment after the First Amendment, also known as the amendment that must not be named, and sometimes called the Second Amendment—was intercepted this week: “My fellow Americans, Today I will exhibit a bill in Congress that will require citizens from age 5 […]
Why do we disagree? Ask natural selection.
Reading Time: 2 minutes It’s entirely possible that Shakespeare’s innumerable rhetorical gems popped into his head willy-nilly without bidding, and he jotted them down for later use. He might not have had any particular character in mind. Then, as needed, he consulted his notes and inserted soliloquies and speeches and insults and profundities and short lines into the mouths […]
How Justice Barrett’s religion affects Roe v. Wade
Reading Time: 3 minutes Shall we pretend Amy Coney Barrett’s religion doesn’t matter on the Supreme Court? Article VI of the Constitution says religion can never be used as a qualification for any public office in America. So, religion itself is off-limits as a criterion of merit or demerit. But can the effects of one’s religion be seen as […]
The ‘Everybody Else And The Supreme Court Justices Quiz’
Reading Time: 2 minutes The latest national craze, believe it or not, is a quiz. Take the quiz right here, right now, and see how you do! Check all correct responses on the Everybody Else And The Supreme Court Justices Quiz: 1. Who can keep a job after they’ve been caught lying on a job application? (a) No one […]
Rationality: A book recommendation for National Day of Reason
Reading Time: 2 minutes The first Thursday in May every year is a tad significant in the U.S. With roots in the early Republic, a 1952 Congress established this day as the ‘National Day of Prayer,’ one in which the President is required to instruct citizens to pray. How odd a notion while wielding a Constitution that forbids the […]
Did you know this about the Old West?
Reading Time: 3 minutes A diary entry from Wyatt Earp, the famed lawman from the Old West, was just discovered and it’s a hoot to read. It says … Tombstone, Arizona, Fall, 1881, Monday Dear Diary, Those McLaurys are as dumb as a waterlogged one-legged hitching post. I don’t give two centavos if they re-branded forty-six cows from the federal […]
‘What Kind of Liar Are You?’ The game show and national craze
Reading Time: 3 minutes Carl (announcer): Today’s show is sponsored by Dissembler Nation, the resume and CV organizer unit that “Gets You Jobs!” Audience: [rousing applause] Dave (host): Everyone lies sometimes, don’t they? What kind of a liar are you? Our celebrity panel will choose among today’s contestants and the winner will be taking home a pile of cash along with a wax statuette […]
Parenting a precocious child
Reading Time: 3 minutes She was savvy even as a toddler, with apt facial expressions to match—the knitted brow, narrowed eyes, faraway gaze, puckish grin, chin in hand. When she was three, I asked her to her face if she was the Buddha. She demurred. And so it went through years of parenting a socially astute, logically shrewd child. […]
It’s Earth Day, so read this book
Reading Time: 2 minutes In honor of Earth Day, you should consider reading this wonderful book, A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters by Henry Gee. Mr. Gee is a senior editor at Nature magazine and the author of numerous books, and he has been a guest on several radio and […]