What has emerged from the story of Richie Incognito of the Miami Dolphins tormenting fellow teammate and rookie Jonathan Martin so much that the latter left the team is that there is a vicious culture of hazing in the NFL (see here and here) that has come to be accepted as normal. [Read more…]

You can listen to a recording of the oral arguments in the case of Greece v. Galloway about the role of prayer at official government functions. Listening to the arguments is a different experience from reading the transcript because you can pick up nuances such as asides, sarcasm, and jokes. [Read more…]

I watched the film in its recommended 3D version and it was enjoyable. The film belongs to the genre of disaster films where people are stranded in a remote place because of an unfortunate series of accidents. There is no place more remote than outer space and the set up for this film is when a space shuttle repair mission to the Hubble telescope is bombarded by space debris that causes havoc. [Read more…]

The question of work-life balance is often posed in the context of professionals trying to juggle careers and family. It is good to be reminded from time to time about the real lives of young people who struggle against great odds to just make ends meet, many of them having to juggle many duties and shoulder responsibilities that the rest of us did not have to think about until we were much older. [Read more…]

Now that the shut down has ended with nothing gained by it but plenty lost by people all over the country, we have the inevitable post-mortems that seek to pin the blame on some and rescue the reputations of others, all done by means of anonymous leaks to the media by those allied with the various Republican factions that ended up losing. [Read more…]

In reports on the death of legendary Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap, while his strategic and tactical prowess were noted, much was made of the fact that his leadership resulted in the loss of life of large numbers of Vietnamese soldiers in their struggle to rid their country of invaders, first the French and then the US. [Read more…]

Now that the shut down has ended, we can expect to see focus shift (at least until the next doomsday on January 15, 2014) to the question of immigration. Because of the rising numbers of Hispanics in the US partly fueled by immigration, there will be greater focus on the views of Hispanics are on various issues. [Read more…]

I have been trying to understand some of the arcane issues surrounding the way the US government is run and what follows is what I have been able to learn. Take it with a grain of salt since I am neither an economist nor an accountant.

The current debt limit, the maximum amount that the government is allowed to borrow, was raised on May 19, 2013 to $16.70 trillion, which is projected to be reached on October 17, 2013. When the government’s expenditures exceed the amount it has in its checking account, the government is authorized to sell US Treasury notes to raise cash make up the difference provided the total amount does not exceed that limit. [Read more…]

It is no secret that the leadership of the Republican party would like to re-open the government by passing a clean continuing resolution without any other provisions and also to raise the debt-ceiling limit. It is also clear that there are more than enough Republican votes in the House of Representatives to join up with the Democrats to do so. The number of Republicans who refuse to do is lies anywhere from 30 to 80, not small but nowhere near enough to stop this from happening, if the Republican leadership were to bring it to the floor. [Read more…]

There was an interesting table giving the percentages of religious affiliations of members of Congress and comparing them with the population at large. It turns out that it is slowly becoming more diverse over time. [Read more…]