Rescue Me: Tales of Rescuing the Dogs Who Became Our Teachers, Healers, and Always Faithful Friends by Val Silver My rating: 5 of 5 stars Rescue Me is a collection of tales about a subject I am personally very passionate about -- animal rescue. The stories are told by multiple people, and as a result some of them are more poignant than uplifting...the authors may not speak with "one" voice, but these stories told from the heart will almost certainly touch yours. The book is worth buying just for the story of Biscuit the "do-over" dog, that went from death row in the animal shelter to become a therapy dog. Another story that resonated with me personally were the delightful "Lollipop Can't Hold Her Licker" that opens with an unforgettable hook line: "Oh. My. Gawd. Your dog looks just like Gene Simmons." With their unified message, the authors said all the right things that another person familiar with the needs and difficulties and a passion for animal rescue wants to hear: spay and neuter. Adopt, don't shop. Senior dogs need homes, too. Animal rescue is a labor of love, and that love shines through in the stories in this collection. Amazon helped decide the number of stars this book deserved -- five stars meant that I loved reading it, and four meant that I only liked the book. While I found it objectionable that one author described the wonderful, baying voice of a Basset Hound as a "God-awful sound", I must admit that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, just as not every aficionado of music appreciates Gene Simmons of KISS. View all my reviews … [Read more...]
Archives for July 2014
A review of “Rescue Me” by Val Silver
The vapid nature of atheism
There is a common misconception that most if not all scientists are atheists, and that the vast majority of atheists are brilliant thinkers. True, there are some very smart people who call themselves atheists. But most of these people remain willfully ignorant of any potential information that might upset their apple-cart of a worldview. For some people, it is enough for them to simply say they don't believe in any sort of a God. Others, namely antitheists, actually hate the concept of supernatural intelligence so much that they campaign to eradicate the idea among the general public. Some of these antitheists constantly lurk on the internet, hoping to evangelize their lack of faith and lead some of the sheeple astray. I cannot tell you how many times one of these antitheists have threatened to "educate" me on the alleged scientific evidence, only to demonstrate in subsequent conversation that they know even less about the science involved than me. Most recently, one of these intrepid atheists at a Facebook forum called The Battlefield directed me to read Victor Stenger's paper titled "A Scenario for a Natural Origin of Our Universe," presumably to convince me that our universe did not have a supernatural origin. Before going any further, it should be clearly stipulated that I don't know nearly as much about physics as Dr. Stenger. However, after reading a bit of his work, I'm fairly well convinced Dr. Stenger doesn't really know much more about the origin of our universe than I do. His "natural origins" paper, found in the Cornell University … [Read more...]