An elderly parishioner was upset at the deteriorated state of a fresco depicting Jesus on the wall of a church in Spain. Years of moisture had taken its toll leaving a splotchy mess. [Read more…]
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
An elderly parishioner was upset at the deteriorated state of a fresco depicting Jesus on the wall of a church in Spain. Years of moisture had taken its toll leaving a splotchy mess. [Read more…]
If you were driving by and saw on the sidewalk a man struggling with a woman over a bag, what would you think? [Read more…]
Yesterday, I wrote about a report put out by The Chronicle of Philanthropy disaggregating the amount of charitable giving according to various criteria. In its discussion of the report, NPR said that poor people tended to give a larger proportion of their income to charity, and tried to explain why this might be so. [Read more…]
Here are two examples of people turning small everyday items into projectiles without any mechanical aids. In the first case, a man throws ordinary playing cards in a way that can slice vegetables. [Read more…]
Watch Todd Akin ask for forgiveness for his comments about rape. Most of it was based on the premise of a poor choice of words rather than a fundamentally erroneous idea, because he says “I used the wrong words in the wrong way and for that I apologize…. The mistake I made was in the words I said, not in the heart I hold.” [Read more…]
There have recently been a few high profile cases of plagiarism, the latest being Fareed Zakaria, who quickly admitted to the offense and apologized and whose TV show was initally suspended for a month as a punishment but quickly brought back. He has also resigned from Yale University’s Governing Board. [Read more…]
The media has to stop this practice of labeling anything controversial said by a politicians (or the one-percenters) as a ‘flub’ or a ‘gaffe’. Those labels should be reserved for either honest mistakes or for statements that were intended but have fairly trivial consequences. For a politician, confusing the names of the leaders of foreign countries is a gaffe. It does not tell us much about what the person’s views on foreign policy are. But saying something that you believe does not become transformed into a gaffe simply because it gets you in hot water. [Read more…]
The latest news from Pakistan lends further support to the impression that it is coming further under the sway of vigilante Islamic groups that are terrorizing those who offend their delicate sensibilities. [Read more…]
There are a lot of crazy people out there. An Ipsos Global Public Affairs survey conducted for the Reuters news agency finds that one in 7 (14%) of the global population believes that the world will end in their lifetime. About 10% associate this with the so-called Mayan calendar prophecy that supposedly signals the end of the world on December 21, 2012, totally ruining the Christmas holidays. [Read more…]