There has been quite a bit of publicity about watching the transit of Venus across the Sun. Apparently for a few hours earlier this week, you could see a small black dot move across the face of the Sun. [Read more…]
More details on the sordid behavior of the Catholic Church hierarchy in covering up the sexual abuses cases by its clergy keep emerging. The latest is this revelation that the church paid priests accused of such abuse to leave. The church, of course, denies that this amounted to a secret payoff to keep the matter quiet by quietly getting rid of the priests rather than reporting them to the authorities. [Read more…]
McLeroy is a dentist who was on the Texas School Board. He was a creationist and was one of the key people pushing their agenda (as well as some other extreme right wing positions) on the schools and its textbooks. He was narrowly prevented from serving a second term. [Read more…]
I have been highlighting the many ways is people who are poor and/or nonwhite tend to be at the receiving end of harsher treatment from the police and other authorities if they run afoul of them for any reason when out in public. Now Matt Taibbi describes how New York City subjects them to harassment by the police even if they are not out in public but are inside their own apartment buildings. It is called the ‘Clean Halls’ program. [Read more…]
… and for people like him who try to use quantum physics and cosmology to argue for the existence of god. [Read more…]
A new book by Ken Segall titled Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success describes the introduction in 1998 of the iMac, the computer that anchored Apple’s comeback. Here is a passage from an excerpt of the book. [Read more…]
Some interesting reflections from a professional safecracker who works on the right side of the law, helping people and companies that have inadvertently locked themselves out of their own safes. It turns out that some vaults in banks have a ‘time lock’ that once set and the door locked, only unlocks the vault once the required time has elapsed. Such a device caused a panic when a bank executive locked her own child inside the vault. [Read more…]
There is a small group of Christians who take the Bible literally and interpret a passage from the very last chapter of Mark (16:17-18) that reads: “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover” as a test of faith and handled deadly snakes to show that they are indeed true believers. [Read more…]
John Davis was taking an exit to the city of Cleveland off I-90 when he saw a panhandler in a wheelchair by the side of the road. He tried to give the man two one-dollar bills but they fluttered to the ground. An eagle-eyed police officer saw this and immediately cited Davis for littering, an offence that carried with it a $344 fine. [Read more…]