The religious exemption card is getting harder to play

In the US, claiming that some action is based on their religious faith tends to give people wide latitude. So it is not surprising that people reach for it even in situations where it is hard to discern any religious basis. We see this now as states and companies are issuing vaccine mandates requiring that their employees get vaccinated or conform to various kinds of other requirements such as regular testing or get fired.

But people who are trying to use religious exemptions to get out of vaccine mandates are not finding it as much of an easy sell as they might have expected. We saw how basketball player Andrew Wiggins had his request for such an exemption denied and now the head football coach along with four of his coaching staff of Washington State University were fired for not getting vaccinated as required for all state employees.
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Ted Cruz told to butt out by Australian political leader

The chief minister of Australia’s Northern Territory did not take kindly to Ted Cruz criticizing his vaccine mandate, and told him to buzz off.

The scientific consensus on climate change is overwhelmingly strong

A new study finds that the scientific consensus that humans are altering the climate has passed the 99.9% level.

The degree of scientific certainty about the impact of greenhouse gases is now similar to the level of agreement on evolution and plate tectonics, the authors say, based on a survey of nearly 90,000 climate-related studies. This means there is practically no doubt among experts that burning fossil fuels, such as oil, gas, coal, peat and trees, is heating the planet and causing more extreme weather.

One has to parse statistics like this carefully to see exactly what has been measured.

The latest survey of peer-reviewed literature published from 2012 to November 2020 was conducted in two stages. First, the researchers examined a random sample of 3,000 studies, in which they found only found four papers that were sceptical that the climate crisis was caused by humans. Second, they searched the full database of 88,125 studies for keywords linked to climate scepticism such as “natural cycles” and “cosmic rays”, which yielded 28 papers, all published in minor journals.
…

“It is really case closed. There is nobody of significance in the scientific community who doubts human-caused climate change,” said the lead author, Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at Cornell University.

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Medicine by law

People increasingly use the internet to explore medical issues. That is in general a good thing, provided they are careful about using credible sources for their information and are not too credulous about what they find. Being more knowledgeable about their own health can make for more fruitful conversations with their physicians.

But the old saying ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ can sometimes kick in and people can decide that they know more than their physician, or indeed the entire medical profession, and demand specific treatments. They especially do this when it comes to ‘off-label’ uses of drugs, when people ask that a drug that has been shown to be effective in treating one condition be used to treat a different condition where its efficacy or even safety has not been established. People sometimes seize upon anecdotes about its use to demand that it be prescribed for them.
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25 years of sexism at Fox News

Fox News is celebrating 25 years of existence and The Daily Show has created a montage of some of the many instances of sexist and misogynistic comments by its male on-air personalities in the presence of their female co-workers. You can see in some cases how uncomfortable the women are and the struggle they face in deciding whether to show their anger (and be accused of lacking a sense of humor) or the awkwardness of trying to laugh it off while still making it clear that the comments were inappropriate.

Excellent documentary on Afghanistan

Now that the US has pulled out of Afghanistan, one already sees a drastic decline in media coverage of that country. The PBS investigative program Frontline has just released an excellent documentary Taliban Takeover on the twenty-year old war that the US waged in Afghanistan.

What makes this program particularly notable is that the journalist Najibullah Quraishi is himself an Aghan who was born and raised in that country and has covered the war all this time, providing him with a breadth of knowledge of the country’s languages, history, and peoples that enables him to provide an in-depth perspective that is lacking in most western sources. He has contacts with key members of the Taliban, al Qaeda , and ISIS and was embedded with these groups at various times and thus has access to them and was able to interview them. He also interviewed many courageous women who are wondering what the future is for them.

His reporting shows that the departure of the US and installing of the Taliban in power has brought some stability to the country but at the cost of freedoms as the government seeks to rule according to Islamic law and that now there are power struggles within factions of the Taliban and with al Qaeda and ISIS.

For those seeking to better understand what is going on there and why the US mission was pretty much doomed from the start, I can highly recommend this 53-minute program.

Who knew?

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Fantasyland) said that the horse de-worming medicine Ivermectin that the nutjobs are pushing as a covid treatment, won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Surely she could take a little more care when making stuff up and at least say that it won the prize for medicine, though even then the prize is given to people and not products. We are entitled to expect better lies from our elected representatives. These people really have contempt for their followers.

Show some respect, Marjorie!

If you thought that misinformation on English internet sites was bad …

… John Oliver walks us through the nightmare on the internet in the languages of immigrant communities where it seems to be totally unchecked. For example, while Alex Jones has been booted from YouTube for spreading falsehoods, a Vietnamese clone of his is running wild saying pretty much the same things. For many older immigrants with poor knowledge of English, these ‘news’ feeds are their only sources of information. Oliver says that young immigrants despair of how their elderly relatives are being misled.

The ugliness of Facebook (exposed again) may be a sign of its impending demise

Facebook has become a colossus in social media all over the globe, along with the companies it purchased like Instagram and WhatsApp. It has become so big, its power and influence so widespread, that it is seen a threat to the well-being of societies. The various abuses that it has been associated with, such as enabling the fomenting of hate and divisiveness in societies that have led to genocidal actions, have been well-documented. After each such revelation, Facebook executives come before various bodies and go through the same ritual. They claim that they just provide a communication platform for people to express their views and that it is not their fault if other people abuse their platform. They then promise to try and implement safeguards that will minimize the risks of damage. But nothing they claim they are doing seems to work and the cycle gets repeated.
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