Neo-Nazis come to CWRU

My former institution Case Western Reserve University has not been spared the rise of neo-Nazi propaganda that has been seen nationwide. Within the last few weeks, there have been incidents of swastikas drawn of bathroom walls, one of which houses the office of multicultural affairs and then today the Plain Dealer reports that flyers advertising a neo-Nazi website were found around the campus.
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How GPS systems impact navigational skills

I hate not knowing where I am and where I am going. While I am not averse to using GPS navigation to find my way around, I admit to not liking being entirely dependent on it. Just following step-by-step instructions from a disembodied voice leave me feeling uneasy because I like to know the big picture. Hence I also take with me old-fashioned road maps and before any trip, look up the general route that I will be taking and commit it to memory.
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The coming major fight over Medicare for All

Thanks to a sustained effort, the idea of Medicare for All as a way to introduce universal health care coverage has become part of the mainstream conversation. It is no longer seen as the fringe issue it was portrayed as when Bernie Sanders spoke in favor of it just a few years ago during his campaign for the presidency. It played a big role in the congressional elections and Lee Fang and Nick Surgey have obtained a document that outlines how the health industry is gearing up to launch a fight against it.
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Why Trump is going after the judiciary

Donald Trump’s attack on a federal judge who ruled against him as being an ‘Obama judge’ and thus acting in a biased way resulted in an unusual rebuke from US Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts who decried adding labels to federal judges once they are on the bench, declaring that they should be presumed to be above partisan interests. To no one’s surprise, Trump did not take Robert’s comments lying down and has issued a new series of tweets against the judiciary.
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Banning women from wearing ‘nighties’ in public

An Indian village council has created a stir by banning women from wearing ‘nighties’ in public, with the threat of a fine for the women who do and a reward for informants who snitch on them.

Village elder Balle Vishnu Murthy told a visiting colleague from BBC Telugu that the ban was to stop women from exposing their bodies. “It is okay to wear nighties at home but wearing them outdoors could attract attention and cause trouble for the wearer,” he said.

Westerners might be forgiven for thinking of the ‘nightie’ as some kind of flimsy revealing item of nightwear that one sees in stores like Victoria’s Secret. Far from it. It is a one-piece tunic along the lines of a long smock that is slipped over the head and covers the body from the neck to the ankles. It is far more functional than the traditional sari for doing chores and getting around. It did originate as nightwear but expanded its role as its comfort and utility became more widely recognized, pretty much like how sweatpants and yoga pants are now commonly seen in public in the US.
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Trump and Saudi America – following the same old script

To no one’s surprise, Donald Trump has sided with Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. All that Trump required was a denial by bin Salman and his father the king to feel that the there was sufficient uncertainty to prevent his taking any meaningful steps. Of course, in these days, there is no amount of evidence that can be produced that he could not dismiss by saying that it was fake news, so this was a foregone conclusion.
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Dine-and-dash dater gets his just desserts

Remember the story I wrote about back in August of the Los Angeles man who would use dating apps to arrange dinner dates with women at nice restaurants and after eating an expensive meal would leave the table on some excuse and vanish, leaving the women with huge bills? He had defrauded at least ten women over a period of two years.

Well a court has sentenced him to 120 days in jail, three years of probation, and banned him from using dating apps and websites.

At least for the next three months, he won’t have to pay for his meals.

Ted Danson learns how to floss

I have written before about my admiration for the comedy series The Good Place. During a break in the shooting one of the actors William Jackson Harper tried to teach Ted Danson how to floss, which is apparently the name of a dance move. Danson does it about as well as an old out-of-it guy like me might be expected to do, much to the amusement of two other actors in the show Kristin Bell and D’Arcy Carden.

You call this is a debate?

Mississippi is going to have a run-off election on November 27 to decide its senate seat. This should have been an easy win for the incumbent Republican senator Cindy Hyde-Smith against her Democratic opponent Mike Espy. But Hyde-Smith, who was appointed to the seat to replace Thad Cochran who had to retire due to ill health, had managed to make the race more competitive by various bone-headed moves such as wearing a confederate cap and praising a secessionist general from the civil war, suggesting that suppressing the votes of liberals would be a good idea, and worst of all, saying that she would gladly be in the front row for a lynching. The last was particularly egregious given that state’s history of public lynchings and the fact that her opponent is black.
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