Links for 2011-12-20

If we're going to have a real discussion about the place of public religion in our public spectacles, then let's have one instead of some mushy, Wonder Bread platitudes about how great it is that Tim Tebow talks about Jesus and doesn't get caught doing strippers two at a time in the hot tub. If religion comes into the public square, it is as vulnerable as any other human institution to be pelted with produce. Ignorance does not become wisdom just because you gussy it up with the Gospels. If we keep faith with those American values, then we might just let him off the hook enough to see if he simply can become a better quarterback than Andy Dalton.

"Eat your lunch, control."

In the Mad Art Lab back-channel, it was suggested that somebody make a "Where's Waldo" style image regarding the search for the Higgs. I thought about it, and it dawned on me that it that finding the Higgs Boson isn't like finding Waldo at all. It's more like if Waldo exploded and you needed to collect his body parts and identify the body. That's how the scientists at CERN are looking for the Higgs, and that's how today's comic was born.

I used to be confused as to why LIHEAP was always among the first programs on the chopping block when states or the federal government wanted to cut the budget. LIHEAP, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, helps low-income families pay the heating bill. Congress just cut the program by 25 percent -- or $3.5 billion. Every one of those dollars would have gone to keep a poor family warm in the winter, meaning that those families wouldn't have KEPT any of it. Every dollar of that funding would have quickly passed through the hands of those families and gone directly to big corporations -- first the utility companies, then the energy companies that supply them. And that's why these cuts confused me. I figured that, very roughly speaking, we've got two kinds of lawmakers: the kind who like welfare programs for the poor and the kind who like corporate welfare. LIHEAP is both of those things.