Why dark energy causes the universe’s expansion to accelerate

The surprising discovery that the universe is not just expanding but that the rate of expansion is increasing is what led to the idea of dark energy as the cause of that acceleration. But explaining in non-mathematical terms to a lay audience why dark energy leads to an accelerating expansion is not easy and introducing the idea that dark energy creates a negative pressure does not help much either. [Read more…]

Heaven is not for real

It looks like 2014 is going to be big year from religious mush in films. In addition to the Noah film I wrote about yesterday, Heaven Is For Real will be released around Easter, supposedly based on a true story about a little boy who had a near death experience and then gave a remarkably detailed and accurate account of all the people and things that he had seen in heaven, including things that he could not have known about. [Read more…]

Geithner goes to Wall Street

Timothy Geithner has, during his entire time as governor of the New York Fed and then as Treasury Secretary, been a loyal servant of Wall Street and the big banks. Neil Barofksy, in his blistering expose and insider’s view of how the financial bailout played out, showed how Geithner and the other senior executives in Treasury seemed to see their role as serving the interests of the banks rather than the taxpayers who were paying their salaries. [Read more…]

Noah goes Hollywood

The story of Noah in the Bible poses a serious challenge to religious believers. Taken literally and looked at without using a religious lens, this is a monstrous story of the worst genocide in the history of humankind, and committed by a supposedly loving god no less. Religions have for a long time managed to gloss over this story to obscure the most ghastly aspects of it. They spend time on quite a detailed description of all the preparation work on building and stocking the Ark, quickly go over the actual slaughter, and then spend time on what came afterwards, with rainbows and sunshine and birds and flowers heralding the dawn of a wonderful new world. [Read more…]

‘Inter-religious’ panel discussion

I took part in a panel discussion on religion on Wednesday. It was organized by the students living in the dorm of the Cleveland Institute of Music, so about twenty students of classical music attended. The panel consisted of professors of Christianity and Islam from another university, a professor of Judaic studies from my university, and me. I will refer to the others as C, M, and J respectively. [Read more…]

More fun with JP Morgan Twitter fiasco

Matt Taibbi has been one of the biggest scourges of the megabanks, relentlessly cataloging their criminality (he memorably described Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”). He was incredulous that anyone at JP Morgan Chase thought it was a good idea to invite the general public using the hashtag #askJPM to ask them for career advice on a public forum like Twitter. [Read more…]

Getting angry over nothing

One of the things that really puzzle me is how people can get worked up over the most absurd things. Take the Affordable Care Act. There has been a concerted effort by those opposed to this reform to scuttle it by whipping up anger against any and all aspects of it. I find it really despicable how far some states have gone to prevent people from signing up for health insurance under the new system. [Read more…]

Can’t you feel the hate tonight?

In an effort to improve its image using social media, megabank JP Morgan Chase invited people on social media to tweet questions to them in advance using the hashtag #AskJPM and that Vice Chairman Jimmy Lee would take an hour to answer them.

They got a good response all right, an avalanche of questions which were predominantly snarky and angry. See more here and here. The hashtag is still active and the hits keep coming. [Read more…]