The debate over gun control is a complicated one. A case can be made that people should have the right to own guns of their own. But there is no question that opponents of any form of gun control invest in the Second Amendment an almost mystical quality that suggests that any regulation of any kind is a horrendous violation, and this is taking them over the cliff leading to a kind of extremism that can backfire. [Read more…]
Now that the hunt seems to be over for the people who carried out the Boston marathon bombings, there is some debate over what rights the captured person has, particularly his Miranda rights. There are those who make the facile argument that the bombing was an ‘act of terror’ and that those accused of such acts are not deserving of due process rights. Apparently the suspect is not going to be read his Miranda rights until after extensive questioning. [Read more…]
It is obvious that Kentucky senator Rand Paul has, like so many others in the Republican party, presidential ambitions that are likely to manifest itself in a run in 2016. The reason is that if you miss that chance, the next best opportunity will be 2024, and that might seem like too long a wait for Republicans who see the demographic shifts working against them. [Read more…]
One of the hallmarks of how change occurs in religious organizations is that it is done very slowly, by a series of small steps. We see that happening with the Boy Scouts of America. They have been getting a beating about their hostile attitude towards gay members and leaders, with people and businesses withdrawing their financial support, always a bad sign for organizations like that. [Read more…]
I have written before about the phenomenon of ‘sockpuppetry’, where people adopt another identity and use that new identity to praise and otherwise provide support to their real selves. Basically, you create your own fan club and the internet allows people to do that somewhat anonymously. [Read more…]
A new bipartisan commission reports on what many of us knew for a long time but some in the media chose to ignore, that the US was systematically and massively practicing torture at the same time that top government officials from president Bush on down were denying that they were doing so and claiming high moral reasons, that it went against our values and so on. [Read more…]
It is time to turn to the issue of how to produce the Higgs particle. Particles that are too short-lived to be found in nature have to be produced in the laboratory. What one does is to use Einstein’s famous relation E=mc2. If one has energy large enough, one can in principle produce any particle in the lab. The larger the mass of the desired particle, the larger the energy required. The way the particle is produced is by accelerating easily obtainable stable particles (i.e., those that do not decay quickly into other particles) like protons and electrons (and their anti-particles) and then colliding them with each other so that their energy of motion is converted into mass energy of the new particle. (For previous posts in this series, click on the Higgs folder just below the blog post title.) [Read more…]
I was always curious as to how people are selected to be in the police line up of suspects. Apart from the person of interest, who are the other people? Police officers in plain clothes was my guess. But this clip from a new comedy series The Lineup on YouTube suggests that I may be wrong. (Via Bluegal) [Read more…]
Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who is one of the many Republicans with presidential ambitions, made a splash earlier this year by saying that the Republican party had to stop being the ‘stupid party’, saying things that made them look hateful and ridiculous in the eyes of the electorate. He was referring to the statements about rape made by Republican senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock in 2012 that transformed likely wins into defeats. [Read more…]
Yesterday CNN had a terrible news day, first reporting that a suspect had been arrested in connection with the Boston marathon bombings and then having to retract the story. You can see the time sequence of the CNN debacle here. [Read more…]