Stephen Colbert zeroes in on how Paul Ryan conveniently abandoned his enthusiastic promotion of Ayn Rand once her atheistic and political views became better known and uncomfortable for modern Republican orthodoxy and his own political ambitions. [Read more…]
Australian mining tycoon Gina Rinehart, reportedly the world’s richest woman, has some advice for all those whining poors. [Read more…]
Lying in politics is not uncommon. But it is a sign of weakness because it means that you really don’t have a good case as to why people should vote for you over your opponent. It is also risky. You can get away with a certain amount of it by but have to be alert to not cross an invisible line and gaining a reputation of being a chronic liar because then every statement starts to be scrutinized and even those that might earlier have been shrugged off as trivial or merely hyperbolic become further evidence of lying, as has become the case with Ryan’s claims about his marathon prowess. [Read more…]
Herman Cain was on The Daily Show a couple of night ago and once again made a fool of himself. He was once the head of a major corporation so that means that he cannot be a total idiot. Holding such a job requires one to be somewhat savvy and numerate and literate. So why is it that he now comes across as a grinning doofus? Has he realized that this shtick plays well with the Republican party and is his ticket to media fame in the twilight of his life? [Read more…]
I do not watch any of the convention proceedings because they are highly scripted and rarely produce any news. But I do read news items about them. One of the hot rumors that was going around was the appearance of a surprise speaker for the final night. I thought that was rather odd in itself, since it conveyed the underlying message that Mitt Romney and his speech were expected to be so boring that they had to find a way to attract a larger audience by promising a mystery guest. [Read more…]
The comments by the Catholic priest Benedict Groeschel that I wrote about yesterday, where he seemed to view sexual abusers like priests and even Jerry Sandusky with indulgence while suggesting that their victims may be the real predators who may have seduced them, created a predictable uproar. [Read more…]
I have referred before to the WIN-Gallup survey of 57 countries that showed a decline in religion worldwide and a rise in disbelief. When you have a global phenomenon, the reasons for it are likely to be global in scope as well. My argument (made in a series of posts titled Why Atheism is Winning) is that it is the inevitable march of modernity that is slowly but surely killing religion. Religion has no escape. It is anchored in the past by its holy texts and that anchor is a major drag on it, causing it to steadily fall behind even as science and technology are rapidly moving the world forward. [Read more…]
Mathematics has always been a beautiful discipline, but its appeal is of an austere kind that takes some effort to fully appreciate. But computers and simulations now enable people to create visualizations of the beauty that they could formerly only create in their minds. The beautiful patterns generated by the Mandelbrot set is one example. [Read more…]
I have been musing for some time on a curious feature involving the names of some key figures all of whom share the same fascination with objectivism.
Ayn Rand → Rand Paul → Paul Ryan → Ryan (loves) Ayn → Ayn Rand → …
Coincidence? I don’t think so. I think it is one of the circles of hell that Dante overlooked.
One of the puzzling things about the sexual abuse problems that have been exposed in closed, secretive, and hierarchical organizations like the Catholic Church, Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, and football programs is the fact that these abuses were so widespread and long-standing that they could not possibly have been kept secret from others in the organizations. So why did they not speak up? It is suggested that the reason is that the higher ups wanted to avoid damage to the image of the institution by a public scandal and thus tried to address the problem internally. [Read more…]