I have just received the proofs of my forthcoming book THE GREAT PARADOX OF SCIENCE: Why its conclusions can be relied upon even though they cannot be proven (notice how I manage to insert a plug for it at every opportunity?) and have to meet a tight deadline to check for errors and make corrections as well as create the index.
As a result, I will be posting infrequently during breaks from doing all those things.
I am not sure how many people read the comments to my posts. If you don’t, you are missing a treat because those are often better than my original posts.
For example, I recently had a post about whether plants are conscious. It was a pretty superficial post looking at recent claims and counterclaims. But the comments from this blog’s readers went really deeply into the nature of consciousness and how we might identify its existence. It contains a lot of useful information and insights and that comment thread is definitely worth a read.
Donald Trump has been on a racist Twitter tear over the last few days, attacking four progressive congresswomen of color, accusing them of hating America and that they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime[-]infested places from which they came”. This ‘go back to your own country’ is what is said by racists when they encounter a person of color or someone speaking Spanish in a public place, because they assume that America is a place only for white people. Of the four, three were born in the US and the fourth Ilhan Omar came as a child as a refugee.
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My attention was caught by this news item from Akela Lacey about how the state of South Carolina is seeking to discriminate against foster parents who are not Christian.
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is considering whether to grant a South Carolina request that would effectively allow faith-based foster care agencies in the state the ability to deny Jewish parents from fostering children in its network. The argument, from the state and from the agency, is that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act should not force a Protestant group to work with Jewish people if it violates a tenet of their faith.
…If granted, the exemption would allow Miracle Hill Ministries, a Protestant social service agency working in the state’s northwest region, to continue receiving federal dollars while “recruiting Christian foster families,” which it has been doing since 1988, according to its website. That discrimination would apply not just to Jewish parents, but also to parents who are Muslim, Catholic, Unitarian, atheist, agnostic or other some other non-Protestant Christian denomination.
Thailand is unique among the nations of South East Asia in that it avoided being conquered by the European powers during their period of colonial expansion. I knew about this and had been mildly curious about how Thailand maintained its independence while the countries around it were falling but had never really followed up the question until I happened to meet a Thai socially recently and posed the question to her.
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As I had hoped, many more news outlets have started digging into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s financial background. In my ongoing attempts attempt to try to understand the financial elements of this saga, I found an informative time line of his life that appeared in the Sunday, July 14, 2019 edition of the Plain Dealer that they had created using Vanity Fair and the Miami Herald as their sources.
1953: Born to middle-class parents in Brooklyn.
1969-71: He attends Cooper Union School of Engineering but never attains a degree.
1973: He’s hired to teach math and physics at The Dalton School in Manhattan. Donald Barr, father of current Attorney General William Barr, is the school’s headmaster at the time.
1976: He joins Investment banking company Bear Stearns at the urging of chairman Alan Greenberg, whose son was a Dalton student.
1982: Epstein launches J. Epstein & Co., managing the finances of clients with $1 billion or more.
1990: He purchases a secluded Palm Beach, Florida, mansion, the site of several alleged assaults.
1996: He relocates his company, which he’s renamed Financial Trust Co., to the U.S. Virgin Islands.
1996: Epstein declares a Manhattan mansion at 9 E. 71st St. to be his, but the details are unclear. It’s mentioned by several accusers as the location where they were assaulted.
1998: He buys Little St. James Island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. ”Everybody called it ‘Pedophile Island,”’ said Kevin Goodrich, who is from St. Thomas and operates boat charters. ”It’s our dark corner.”
2005: A 14-year-old girl says she was paid to give Epstein a massage. The police investigation uncovers that he is in contact with many girls.
2006: In May, Epstein is charged with multiple counts of unlawful sex acts with a minor. In July, the investigation is referred to the FBI.
2007-08: Epstein receives a plea deal with Alex Acosta, who was then U.S. attorney for Southern Florida. Epstein receives 18 months in jail but serves only 12. The Miami Herald has since reported that Acosta signed off on a nonprosecution agreement that was ”negotiated, signed and sealed so that no one would know the full scope of Epstein’s crimes.” Acosta went on to become secretary of Labor in April 2017; he resigned Friday amid the growing scandal.
2011: Epstein fails to report as a sex offender to New York.
2015: Virginia Roberts states in a sworn affidavit that he began abusing her at the age of 15 in 1999 while she was employed at Mar-a-Lago.
2018: Beginning in November, the Miami Herald publishes a series outlining Epstein’s sexual misconduct and judicial leniency.
2019: Jennifer Araoz alleges that a woman recruited her outside high school in 2001, and that Epstein later raped her. She was 14.
July 2019: Epstein is arrested July 6 on charges of child sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. He’s accused of paying more than a dozen women and girls to engage in sex acts. Epstein’s lawyers claim that at worst, it was akin to soliciting prostitution.
Daniel Craig is handing over the James Bond baton to Lashana Lynch.
In news that will surely come as a shock to James Bond fans and the film industry at large, it was revealed today that longtime 007 Daniel Craig will pass the Walther PPK to black British actress Lashana Lynch in the iconic role.
For years there has been intense speculation about who would take over the reins of one of the most durable and profitable film franchises in history once Craig stepped aside. Much of that speculation has revolved around whether the series might make a nod toward diversity and cast a person of color or a woman for the first time.
But if the report today from UK tabloid the Daily Mail is to be believed, the 007 producers are going for a radical twofer: casting a 31-year-old black female newcomer as Bond’s heir apparent.
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The idea of Medicare for All has been steadily increasing in popularity, so much so that pretty much all the Democratic candidates for the presidency have endorsed it, a far cry from when Bernie Sanders advocated for it in his 2016 campaign, when it was seen as some kind of unrealistic Utopian goal. As a result, the right wing attacks on it have intensified and they have made all manner of misleading statements about it.
This ad from the Sanders campaign nicely sets the record straight.
Trump is lying again about Medicare for All. Here is what it really means for Americans:
-No premiums
-No co-pays
-No deductibles
-No losing coverage
-No "out of network" doctors
-No surprise bills pic.twitter.com/UbYfCiHAOy— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) July 13, 2019
I cannot really do justice to the incredible game that was just played. England won in the end after a tie-breaker within a tie-breaker. It was really wild, with fortunes swinging this way and that, and with some freak plays at the very end. You can read a comprehensive report here. In short (and this summary comes nowhere close to capturing the drama that took place on the field) , what happened was that New Zealand batted first and scored 241 in their 50 overs (300 deliveries) for the loss of eight wickets. England also scored exactly the same number of runs in their 50 overs, losing their last wicket off the very last ball, making it a rare tied game.
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A group of Republican lawmakers went to an immigrant detention facility in Texas. Donald Trump had sent them there, supposedly to dispel reports of awful conditions that had been coming from so many different sources. The video below shows vice president Mike Pence, and senators Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, Marsha Blackburn, John Cornyn, and Thom Tillis and possibly other senators visiting a detention center where men were housed in severely overcrowded cages and the guard wear masks to presumably avoid the stench of a large mass of people who have been denied basic sanitary facilities.
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