A Portrait of the Dumbass as an Old Man

Reductio ad Hitlerum

I am officially a sissy, biked only 26.7 miles this morning in 2h6m, 1 stop, through downtown Versailles. But, mowed the back grass and raked the 1st 20 pounds of the estimated 150 pounds of acorns that the 30 foot tall red oak in our front yard will drop this fall. I left about 10 pounds of them in the back corner of our yard as an offering to the squirrels, maybe they will eat less from the bird feeders.

My wife for our 32nd wedding anniversary got me a squirrel-proof bird feeder. It has 2 shells, with 6 aligned openings cut in them. The outer shell is on springs, and anything as big as a squirrel will cause the outer shell to drop such that the holes are closed. We'll see how that does. I have great respect for the ingenuity and persistence of squirrels.

Musicwise, LBJ (Lexington Blues Jam, I have decided sounds better than the Old Fart's Jam) went well Wednesday. Lindsay and Eric were on the road with Harmonica Red, Richard was the designated guitarist, and the wonderful Sheri McGee was the drummer. I think Sheri is the best of the drummers who plays there, she is great to watch and I realized, whenever we have gotten a really great "Who Do You Love" jam going, Sheri has been drumming. She changes tempo and mixes it up, really fun to play with. My songs went well, got to play twice, no bass. We had 6 people from Exstream out, I am going to try to get the LBJEA (Lexington Blues Jam Exstream Auxiliary) going, O'Neils is by far the nicest place we have played, I'd like to keep it a while.

Music-aquisition wise, I am listening to:

• Chick Corea and Bela Fleck, "The Enchantment", very listenable jazz piano and banjo, 3 stars.
• Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks, "Beatin' the Heat" -- his 1st studio album since the '70s, with Ricki Lee Jones, Elvis Costello, Bette Midler, and Tom Waits sitting in on tracks. 3 stars, with maybe a few 4 star tracks.
• The Kinks, "Preservation Act 2". Act 1 got 4 stars, this one I don't think so. Plus some annoying Announcements that will get 2 stars so they don't go on the iPod.

Speaking of which, for the 2nd time my iPod froze, listening to it outside while grilling (carrots, red peppers, portabello, tuna). Plugged it into the sync station, it's still froze. I guess I'll try to google up what to do to it.

So, I was thinking about, why would 61% of people not vote for an atheist? I think it winds up being a "Reductio ad Hitlerum" instinct. Theists intuitively think that atheists, without an imaginary superfriend keeping an eye on them, are amoral with no respect for human life, like Hitler -- who actually was a devout Roman Catholic, which was probably why the vatican was silent about Nazi atrocities. Instead of imaginary superfriends and old obsolete books, atheists have logical ethics. The golden rule and the silver rule ("Don't do unto others what you wouldn't want done unto you") are pretty obvious to anyone who wants to live in human society ...