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…]
A British parliamentary select committee has issued a stinging rebuke to Rupert Murdoch personally and to his media empire.
The committee concluded that the culture of the company’s newspapers “permeated from the top” and “speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International”.
That prompted the MPs’ report to say: “We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of major international company.”
All those people who are dissatisfied with Barack Obama’s policies but don’t know where else to turn will be pleased to hear that May 2 has been declared “Grumble About Obama Day”, a “day of deliberately ineffectual venting” where you can let off steam without actually doing anything about it.
So go to it, folks!
American exceptionalism is an article of faith in the US. A surefire applause line for a pandering politician is to take some fairly humdrum achievement and tack on the phrase “only in America”. Audiences seem to delight in thinking that achievements that are commonplace the world over are somehow only possible here because of the unique conditions in the US. [Read more…]
I have been beating up on the Catholic Church recently and have no regrets about doing so because that institution richly deserves it. But I think I should be a little more discriminating and point out that the immense faults of the Catholic Church can be laid almost entirely at the feet of the men in the church, and not the nuns. Not ever having been a Catholic, I have not crossed paths with many nuns in a formal capacity and so do not have much first hand knowledge of them. The few nuns I have met have been extremely nice people but there is more to this defense than personal knowledge. [Read more…]
[Update: NPR got a lot of letters about this story which were quite interesting including one who said it was a “very biased and even hateful story clearly aimed aimed at those of us who love Jesus”.]
Starting yesterday, NPR is having a series of stories on people losing their faith. The first one is about a Methodist minister Teresa MacBain who realized that she was an atheist and came out at the American Atheist conference on March 26. [Read more…]
Those who have been agitating for attacking Iran have been repeatedly making the claim, faithfully repeated by the compliant media, that Iranian president Ahmadinejad said that he wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the map and that this proved that he was a crazy man and that if Iran ever obtained a nuclear weapon, he would use it against Israel. [Read more…]
Today is May Day, the international day of solidarity for workers, and I thought that in its honor I would coopt the famous slogan “Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains” for this post, although it has nothing to do with the labor movement.
Same sex marriage is not legal in the United Kingdom. According to Wikipedia, since 2005, they have had civil partnerships that supposedly provide the same rights and responsibilities of marriage but, as I discovered earlier, this is still not full equality since, for example, if such partners travel abroad they do not have the same rights as married couples. [Read more…]
A new game show Break That Medium! that would be terrific if the people who purport to communicate with dead people really could. (via Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy)
There have been some interesting developments in learning how birds navigate. It was thought that birds had tiny chunks of metal in their beaks or inner ears that enabled them to detect the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field. But more research has thrown doubt on the existence of these so-called ‘compass cells’, saying that they were just a type of white blood cells. [Read more…]