At a news conference in Thailand on November 18, president Obama made the following comments concerning the violence in Gaza and Israel: [Read more…]

Thanks to sophisticated polling techniques, presidential elections in the US have narrowed their attention to not just the few so-called ‘swing states’, but to the handful of undecided voters in those states who can swing an election either way. They are the players while the rest of us have become spectators. So who are these undecided voters that so much attention is lavished over? [Read more…]

Rick Santorum seems to be determined to match Herman Cain in creating apocalyptic visions of what a second term for president Obama would look like that are close to self-parodies. [Read more…]

Two people in England have been convicted of the murder of a teenage relative whom they believed to be using witchcraft, and who drowned in a bath during a forced exorcism. The story of the boy’s final hours was so ghastly [Read more…]

Jonathan Turley has posted an update based on a statement reportedly made by the judge that challenges some of the facts reported in the original story about the assault on [Read more…]

A few days ago, I wrote about how private equity companies like Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital worked. Jon Stewart adds to that story.

To get hints on how to view clips on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post. This show was broadcast on January 31, 2012.

There is a downside to following politics too closely in that it can cause you to misjudge the impact of a news story on the general public. Take the case of Mitt Romney’s taxes. It has been known for a long time amongst the cognoscenti that not only was he wealthy but that his income came from investments and [Read more…]

The archives of my thousands of posts since 2005 that used to be at my old site have been copied over here, so that they are now available at both places.

Because of the size and other complications, the work was tedious and time consuming and I want to acknowledge my deep gratitude to Jason Thibeault over at lousy canuck for carrying out this huge task so efficiently and cheerfully.

One commenter to my previous post wondered if I could write about the Big Bang model, dark matter, dark energy, and so on in a manner accessible to the lay reader. This raises an interesting issue of what to do about the posts that I wrote before I moved here and which are currently archived on my old site. Those archives are in the process of being moved over here but I am not sure when that transfer will be completed.

People are welcome to browse the old category archives where they will find that I have written on a fairly wide variety of topics. If readers would like me to address a specific topic, I may be able to point them to one already written.

New readers at FtB may not be aware that on occasion I make people suffer through a multi-part series of posts on topics that I think require careful explanation. In this particular case, I wrote a 16-part series on the topic Big Bang for beginners that addressed the topic that was requested. Posts 8 and 9 in the series dealt with the role of dark matter and dark energy.

So please keep those requests and suggestions coming.

I have chosen as my comment policy that the first comment by someone has to be approved by me but once approved that person will be able to post comments freely.

I will try to check frequently and apologize in advance if work and other pressures result in delays and your first comment not appearing as soon as you might like.

The blogging software here is different from what I am used to so there may be some rough patches early on until I get the feel of things. If readers notice anything that can be improved upon, I would be grateful for their suggestions.