You may recall the threat that the Catholic League’s president Bill Donahue issued that he would get advertisers to pull their ads from The Daily Show. [Read more…]
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
HBO has a free online screening of the first episode of the new comedy Veep starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus. It has the same pacing, cross-talk, multiple storylines, and political infighting of The West Wing except it is played strictly for laughs. Some have suggested that it may even be a more accurate portrayal of life in the executive branch of the government than its more serious predecessor, and I can believe that since the principals in Veep are quite ambitious, cynical, and manipulative. There are no high-minded moralists in this crowd. [Read more…]
Throwing people in jail because of their inability to pay debts was one of the horrors of England that Charles Dickens inveighed against, he himself suffering from a deep sense of shame because his father met such a fate. Since 1830, such a practice is no longer legal in the US but the US has brought back what are effectively debtor’s prisons, because people have found ways to jail you for ostensibly other reasons but which in reality are based on your inability to pay debts. “Under the law, debtors aren’t arrested for nonpayment, but rather for failing to respond to court hearings, pay legal fines, or otherwise showing “contempt of court” in connection with a creditor lawsuit.” [Read more…]
We met Chicago Cardinal Francis George before when he threatened to close down hospitals and other Catholic service institutions if their health insurance providers had to comply with the requirement to provide contraceptive services free of charge to their employees. [Read more…]
I am currently attending a conference and so blogging will be a bit more erratic than usual.
When I travel on work, I often eat alone at restaurants. I don’t mind it in the least and, being somewhat introverted, even welcome the chance to be alone after mingling with people all day. I usually take a book with me as a companion, the main problem being that the lighting in restaurants is usually very dim and I have to specifically ask to be seated at a table near a light. The backlighted iPad comes in useful here. [Read more…]
A girl walking along while talking on her phone falls into sinkhole that suddenly opens up. A taxi driver sees it happen and climbs down into the hole to try and get her out. Fortunately she survives and is seemingly unhurt by her experience.
It is really nice the way people take risks to help total strangers in distress. (Via Gawker.)
There has been much discussion recently about computer software that seems to be able to grade students high school essays about as well as humans, but of course much faster. [Read more…]
The personhood legislation proposed in Oklahoma has been deemed to be unconstitutional by a unanimous state Supreme Court.
A federal judge ruled a similar measure in Nevada to be unconstitutional and Mississippi and Colorado voters rejected similar measures.
Maybe there are some ideas too crazy for people to stomach even in these crazy times.
On Sunday April 29 on its program All Things Considered, NPR had an interesting story based on a mock ‘obituary’ by Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke who wrote about the death of Facts. He said that Facts had been ailing for some time but the claim by congressman Allen West (R-FL) that around 80 House of Representatives members of the Democratic party belonged to the Communist party was the final blow that killed it off. [Read more…]