Bombings in Texas

There has been a news story out of Austin, Texas that has received remarkably little mainstream news coverage. Parcel bombs have exploded at various residences killing two people.

Sean Philips had just woken up and was sitting on his couch when he heard the blast that would take his neighbor’s life.

The explosion, police now say, came from a package that Anthony Stephan House encountered on his front porch in north Austin on the morning of March 2.

Police say it was the first of three mysterious package bombings in 10 days in Texas’ capital — explosions that have killed two people, including House, injured two others and left city residents on edge and highly suspicious of packages delivered to their homes.
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This package, and two more that exploded at other Austin residences 10 days later, were placed in front of houses, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said. All were average-sized delivery boxes, and they weren’t delivered by the US Postal Service or delivery services such as UPS or FedEx, police said.

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Comedic round up of the news

This has been a manic week in US politics even by Trump standards, and the comedy shows were hard pressed to cram in all that happened. Both Seth Meyers and Samantha Bee paid close attention to the student walkouts all across the nation is support for real gun control. This clearly has the NRA and Republicans worried because political views are often shaped by one’s experiences as a young adult so they fear losing this generation. Being total reactionaries on women’s, minorities, and LGBT rights was bad enough but did not cause this kind of mass protests.
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Facebook implicated in Sri Lankan religious clashes

The Sri Lankan government has accused Facebook of not acting swiftly enough to take down and counter posts that the government says have inflamed passions among Buddhist hardliners in the country who have been instigating mobs to attack Muslims and destroy their homes and businesses. The government has now moved to block many social media platforms.
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What a surprise! Ben Carson is a liar too

Lost in the news about the Tillerson firing and that Democrats seem to have won the seat long held by Republicans in the special election in Pennsylvania is that the latest to be exposed as a lying grifter in this administration is the oh-so-pious Ben Carson. Carson had said that he was shocked to learn that an expensive dining set had been ordered for his office at a time when his department was cutting funding for projects aimed at alleviating the conditions of the homeless. He said that this had been done without his knowledge and that once he learned of it, he had requested that it be cancelled.
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Trump seems scared of firing people

Normally the way that someone gets fired is their boss calling them in to their office and telling them directly. Depending on the boss, the words used may be gentle or they may be callous but they are usually done in person, especially if the person being fired is high-ranking in the organization. To fire someone by text or email would be highly unusual and by Twitter would unthinkable.
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The Trump slide continues

Donald Trump has fired his secretary of state Rex Tillerson. The turmoil in this administration has become so routine that when I heard the news this morning, my only sense of surprise was that he was the person who was fired since the on-going speculation had pointed to other figures as being the next to go. What is noteworthy, though not surprising, is how ungracious Trump was in taking this action. Rather than telling him personally, Tillerson apparently first heard of it when Trump tweeted the news out to the world.
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A refreshing self-examination by National Geographic

I was never a regular reader or subscriber to the National Geographic magazine but it is famous for its photograph-filled articles from all over the world. But it has faced charges that its portrayal of many countries and its peoples were at best condescending and at worst racist, reinforcing stereotypes of people who did not conform to western standards of looks and living as being somehow inferior. It was particularly famous among schoolboys in Sri Lanka as the place to see photographs of bare-breasted women, and the fact that they were exclusively of color from the developing world was a subliminal message.
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I don’t understand some people

When one moves into a new neighborhood, surely one concern that one would have is how one gets on with one’s new neighbors. If they welcome you, then that is great because having cordial relationships with the people who live around you adds so much to the quality of life. Even though our children have grown and we really no longer need the hassle of maintaining a house, one of the things that keep up from moving into an apartment is because we enjoy our neighbors and the neighborhood so much.
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Primary politics in Texas and Illinois

Texas is often seen as such a drearily and reliably extreme conservative state that its elections are often just referenda between extreme right and nutty right wings of the Republican party but this year is turning out to be interesting, more for what is going on within the two major parties than between them. Last Tuesday was primary election day in Texas and since primary elections are now where most of the action is, there were some interesting outcomes.
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