An always welcome development is the rise of alternative major English news sources to counterbalance those that report from the perspective of the US and Western European governments. Al Jazeera (funded by the Qatar government) is one such voice and now RT (which receives funding from the Russian government) is another rising force. [Read more…]
Charles Murray’s new book Coming Apart supposedly deals with the increasing divergence within the white community over the period 1950-2010. It compares two groups of white people in the 30-49 age range: upper middle class (defined as those with a least a bachelor’s degree and working as a manager or similar high-status professions) with working class (no more than a high school degree and those who work in blue-collar, service or low-skill jobs). [Read more…]
Teller (the silent partner of the Penn & Teller magic duo) has long had a magic trick called ‘Shadows’ which is really beautiful and no one had seemingly figured out how he did it or if they had did not reveal it. I discussed it a couple of months ago but here it is again. [Read more…]
Now that he has put in place policies that are alienating young Catholics, Pope Ratzi is turning his attention to turning off women. As if the church’s policies opposing contraception were not enough, he now reprimanded a large group of US nuns known as the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and appoint a bishop as overseer of their activities because they “had challenged church teaching on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood, and promoted “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”” [Read more…]
It seems like we are moving into an era where basic rights and freedoms are valued not as abstract principles but situationally, depending on the conditions under which the rights are threatened. Equal treatment under the law has always been an imperfectly applied ideal and in the past was violated with impunity but at least in the post-civil rights era, such selectivity was much more discreet. We are entering an era in which there is no longer even any pretense that the laws will be equally applied. [Read more…]
A couple of days ago, The Daily Show had a bit on the ‘war on women’ topic and in the process outraged Bill Donahue of The Catholic League, not that hard to do because he seems to be in a state of eternal apoplexy. In fact, going on TV and screaming that his finely tuned Catholic feelings are hurt seems to be his full-time occupation. [Read more…]
Most people seeking a peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict have clung to the hope of some form of a two-state solution, where each group has its own viable independent state. But Robert Wright writes in The Atlantic that it is rapidly disappearing as a realistic option. [Read more…]