The artist Nagai Hideyuki plays with our sense of perception by drawing figures on two flat pieces of paper that, when they are held at right angles and viewed from a certain direction, give the illusion of being 3-D constructions. [Read more…]
As if the betrayal by Nabisco (and by extension its parent Kraft Foods) in creating a gay Oreo cookie was not bad enough, another food giant General Mills has come out in opposition to the proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot in Minnesota that would ban same sex marriage, saying that such a ban would be bad for business. [Read more…]
Thomas Euteneuer, a Roman Catholic priest who was described as a ‘rock star’ in the anti-abortion movement and the president of Human Life International, reportedly one of the nation’s largest anti-abortion groups, resigned after a woman alleged that his exorcisms to rid her of her demons were actually a series of sexual molestations. The woman has now filed a lawsuit seeking $5.35 million in damages against the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, its bishop and HLI. [Read more…]
The Republican Party of Texas has, at its convention, adopted a party platform that has an education section. You know at once that it is going to make for interesting reading and it does not disappoint. [Read more…]
I was occupied for most of yesterday and did not have time to follow the reactions to the news that almost every aspect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) had been upheld by the US Supreme Court. When late at night I did catch up on the coverage, there seemed to be basically four groups of stories.
One was the predictable and favorite one of speculating about the impact this will have on the November elections. Every single issue from now until November will suffer this same fate because it enables pundits to indulge in content-free talk, their favorite kind. . [Read more…]
Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone and Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism explain to Bill Moyers how similar are the workings of the big banks to organized crime syndicates. Taibbi had an article where he expanded on this idea. [Read more…]
The political cartoonist has the knack of telling uncomfortable truths by putting things in stark contrast.
Below is a quick summary from CNN of the main features of the health care ruling. I cannot vouch for its accuracy, though. [Read more…]
My post on physics researchers searching for the Higgs particle needing to get the chance of statistical errors down to below the five-sigma level (or 0.000028%) generated some discussion on the problems that can arise (mainly the increased likelihood of false positive results) in other areas such as the social sciences where the threshold for acceptability is often as high as 5%. [Read more…]