The US government and Congress and media are in a lather about the 33 year prison sentence given to the Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi, who carried out a fake vaccination program in Pakistan order to aid the CIA in its attempts to find Osama bin Laden. In retaliation, Congress has moved to cut aid to Pakistan, make Afridi a naturalized citizen, and to award him a gold medal. [Read more…]
Like many people, I watch the occasional TED talk, usually because someone else recommended it to me. From watching the talks, I had a vague idea that they were given at a conference of some kind but was not curious enough to try and find out what the conferences were about and who attended. [Read more…]
The labels ‘left’ and ‘right’ in politics originated in the first French National Assembly in 1789 following the revolution, and was named according to the seating arrangement of the groups in the chamber as seen from the president’s chair. The largely economic views associated with those groups became synonymous with left-wing and right-wing politics, with the left seeking social justice largely through redistributive social and economic policies. [Read more…]
Anyone who is even minimally aware of how climate science works knows that you cannot use any one weather event or one anomalous season in any single location to argue for or against global warming. But some of the most vociferous opponents of the global warming hypothesis tend to be scientifically naïve and parochial and think that way (“Look at that snow! So much for global warming! Ha! Ha!). Maybe such people in this area of Ohio will be sobered up by the fact that the last winter was the warmest on record (it was barely a winter) and that we are predicted to have a warmer than normal summer. [Read more…]
I have written before about how Mike Huckabee advocates some really hateful ideas and uses inflammatory language while trying to portray himself as a genial, bass guitar playing, avuncular figure. [Read more…]
Memorial day is tomorrow and the country is awash with flags, especially in cemeteries. I used to idly wonder who carefully arranged those flags in neat rows and assumed that it was some private veterans body or something like the Daughter of the American Revolution or the Rotary Club or something like that. I discovered that at least in our county it is paid for by the county government, i.e., the taxpayers. [Read more…]
We hear a lot from politicians about how we must protect traditional, Bible-based marriage against those who would change its definition to allow same-sex couples. Oddly enough, very few seem to be willing to fully embrace traditional marriage in its most comprehensive form, opting instead for such limited legal actions as restricting it to between one man and one woman. [Read more…]
The film The Avengers is doing boffo box office, breaking all kinds of records. I have not seen it. I am not a fan of action films in general and did not grow up in Sri Lanka reading any of the superhero comics that were popular in the US, so the characters do not resonate with me. [Read more…]
The Tea Party is looking at the wrong place for Obama’s shadowy death panels. They do not exist in the Affordable Care Act but do exist in the way that individuals are selected for summary execution by drones and other means. We now learn that John Brennan, Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and chief counterterrorism advisor to president Barack Obama, and a person who brazenly lies, is the person who has been put in charge of recommending to Obama who should live and who should die. [Read more…]
