News reports are emerging that Glenn Greenwald is leaving The Guardian to join a new media venture that is reportedly being funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and possibly others. The parting has been friendly with both Greenwald and Guardian spokespeople expressing mutual respect and gratitude for what they have been able to accomplish together, especially on the blockbuster Edward Snowden revelations. [Read more…]
So it is the morning of the 16th day of the shut down and the stalemate over that and the debt ceiling continues. As is almost universally accepted, this is entirely due to the efforts of a minority of members within the Republican party who seem to be driven by a fervor that has seized on the Affordable Care Act as some kind of demon possessing the body politic that must be exorcised or the nation will plunge over the cliff like the pigs in the Bible. They say they will not accept anything less than a major undermining of the ACA. [Read more…]
Oprah Winfrey apparently has a segment on her network’s program Super Soul Sunday called Soul to Soul. In one episode she talks with swimmer Diana Nyad. It was an interesting conversation in that Nyad flatly says she is an atheist but uses the words god, soul, and spirit to describe various emotional states relating to the awe that she feels about the wonders of the world. [Read more…]
One of the interesting things about the current government and debt ceiling impasses is that some of the harshest criticisms of Republican party tactics are coming from conservatives who can’t seem to believe how rapidly their party is going downhill. Here is Rod Dreher writing in The American Conservative asking, “Is this what American conservatism is turning into?” He cites a memo about what a focus group of Republicans revealed about what is driving the Republican party extremism. [Read more…]
A Malaysian court of appeals has ruled that only Muslims can use the name Allah to refer to god, even though other religions have been doing so for centuries, since the word entered the Malay language from Arabic a long time ago and is the word used for god in Malay translations of the Bible. This despite the fact that Christians in Indonesia and much of the Arab world use the word Allah with no problems (as yet). [Read more…]
The appalling testing mania that is permeating US education has steadily been going down to lower and lower grade levels. It has now reached even the kindergarten level, with little children having to learn how to answer multiple choice tests, one of the worst forms of assessment. [Read more…]
Malcolm Gladwell has made a good career out of taking a few research findings, buttressing them with a few stories from here and there, and creating sweeping, plausible, and appealingly counter-intuitive theories about human behavior, while ignoring anything that disagrees with his thesis. As someone once said, the facts agree with Gladwell’s theories except when they don’t but you’ll have to find those on your own. [Read more…]
Below is a video of a person who seems to have little idea of how to get out of a tight parking spot. It is excruciating to watch because you constantly feel the urge to yell out “No! No! Don’t cut that way, cut the other way!” We have to give credit to the driver though for not hitting any of the other cars. We also have to admire the patience of the person in the black station wagon at the top left who had to endure all this while waiting to exit. [Read more…]