The Boy Scouts of America is similar to the Catholic Church in its homophobia and its attempts to cover up sexual abuse within the organization. But the Oregon Supreme court recently ruled that 20,000 pages of secret ‘perversion files’ kept by them on suspected child abusers must be released to the public. [Read more…]
We are now less than five months away from the elections and well into the political rah-rah season when people are expected to choose sides and where the goal becomes to help your candidate win. As a result, there will be an intense focus on increasingly marginal issues in order to create the illusion that the candidates differ widely and that it is therefore essential that the opposing candidate not be successful because dire consequences will ensue. [Read more…]
Joseph Smith explains to Mr. Deity, Lucy, and John the Baptist how to make Mormon proselytization cost-effective.
(Via Machines Like Us)
The public library in the Detroit suburb of Troy had a ballot levy in order to raise funds to continue its operation. Of course the Tea Party, with its mindless opposition to any and all taxes, whipped up a campaign against it because they are willing to close down even public libraries to keep a few extra bucks in their pockets. [Read more…]
Recently the employees of a chain of convenience stores called QC Mart got the following memo: [Read more…]
I watched the two remaining episodes of the first season of the new modern-day interpretation of the Sherlock Holmes stories. After the glowing review I gave of the very first episode A Study in Pink, episode 2 The Blind Banker was a huge disappointment. [Read more…]
Today is Father’s Day.
In our family, I resolutely discourage celebration of Father’s Day, seeing it as a purely marketing gimmick to get people to buy useless stuff. I have said this so strongly that my children know not to give me a gift or even send a card and that it is perfectly fine by me if they forget it altogether and not even wish me on the phone, since I too usually forget it until I read the newspaper comics for that day, since some cartoonists use it as a theme, often in sappy ways. [Read more…]
I am surprised at the fascination that Americans have with food and the number of my friends and acquaintances who avidly watch cooking shows. Food is one of the great pleasures in life and I like it as much as the next person but watching it get made carries with it as much interest as watching a carpenter make a cabinet. Once you have admired the skill of the expert, interest wanes, at least for me. I would never have guessed that one day there would be entire TV channels devoted to just food. [Read more…]
Jon Stewart and Larry Wilmore of The Daily Show have one of their always worth watching discussions on race issues, funny on the surface but also making serious points.
(This clip appeared on June 11, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)