The Daily Bluster

For someone who was in the Top Ten Rock Stars Most Likely To Die for ten straight years, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones shows remarkable resilience, considering his rock-star lifestyle. The music magazine New Musical Express (NME) put Keith Richards (or “Keef”) on this list way back in 1973. They finally removed his name when, after ten years, the legendary Rolling Stones guitarist showed no signs of slowing down, either in his music, or in his work-hard-live-hard way of life. 1973 is forty years ago; it’s 2013, and he’s still about, and had just finished a 50 th year anniversary (!) tour with his band, The Rolling Stones—arguably the greatest rock and roll band there is today. Keith Richards may be among rock and roll’s greatest guitarists, and the undisputed King of the Guitar Riffs, but he (and the rest of his band) did not start out at the top. In his memoir Life (written in collaboration with James Fox, published 2010), Keith Richards recounts that he starte...

Many people have been told that evolution is just a theory, and that it is, at most, a hypothesis, or even a guess. A scientific theory, however, is different from the theory the general public is familiar with. Many of us equates theory with hypothesis, which is erroneous. To a scientist, a theory is an explanation of a phenomenon. A scientific law , on the other hand, is a description of a phenomenon, and can be proven by a mathematical equation. To illustrate: Newton’s law of gravity describes how gravity works, which basically means that things fall down if you let go of them. His theory of gravity , on the other hand, is an attempt to explain why this happens (although modern scientists accept Einstein’s Theory of Relativity as a better explanation of gravity). Newton’s and Einstein’s theories will always remain theories, because they are explanations , and different from a law , which describes  things.  A scientific theory therefore does not g...

This question is a favourite among creationists; they often ask this to dismiss the Theory of Evolution. Although this probably dates back from the time of Charles Darwin, many creationists, when engaged in a discussion ( especially in an online discussion), act as if they had just discovered this particular zinger. They believe this is irrefutable, an argument that would surely reduce those smug, know-it-all evolutionists into blubbering idiots trapped in an existentialist despair. If you see this question in an Internet discussion board, this is usually followed by “HAHAHA,” which tends to make the impression that creationists are raving lunatics. This caricature of Charles Darwin with the body of an ape was used since the late 1800s to ridicule him and his ideas about evolution To be fair though, there are people out there who ask this question out of genuine curiosity, maybe because they were told (and taught) all sorts of misinformation and fed lies, deliberately or inad...

"Well meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading - do not discourage children from reading because you feel they're reading the wrong thing. There is no such thing as the wrong thing to be reading and no bad fiction for kids."  - Neil Gaiman (The following is Neil Gaiman's speech during the The Reading Agency's annual lecture held on October 14, 2013 ) It's important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members' interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I'm going to tell you that  libraries   are important. I'm going to suggest that reading  fiction , that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I'm going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things. And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I'm an autho...

So long, Mr. White. It is a very strange thing, when the defeat of a “monster” like Walter White—meth king, murderer, child-poisoner, destroyer of lives—evokes regret in us, the viewers. We feel sorry that his “empire,” his life, his world as he knows it, goes up in wisps of smoke like burned-off crystal meth on a strip of aluminum foil. It’s to the credit of everybody involved in the production of the TV show Breaking Bad —the writers, production staff, directors, show creator Vince Gilligan, and of course the actors—that this show can make us empathize with a man like Mr. White (played by Bryan Cranston, who was ridiculously, stupendously good in portraying the rise of timid, beaten-by-life middle-aged high school teacher into “Heisenberg,” the brilliant, efficient, resourceful, brutal meth kingpin, and his descent into his own purgatory—eschewed by his own family, hunted by the whole world, hiding, planning his own brand of "redemption," desperate for one final de...