Satanic fun and games in Arkansas

Those wacky Satanists are at it again in their efforts to maintain the separation of church and state, targeting the inane practice of some legislatures to post monuments to the Ten Commandments on public grounds. Some people think that the lack of public religiosity is the cause of America’s descent into immorality and that reminding people about what their god expects of them will make their behavior better. There is so much that is obviously wrong with that view that I will not waste time dealing with it.
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An interesting strategy that is likely to fail

Most of us believe that money plays a huge negative role in American politics. Wealthy individuals, organizations, and lobbying groups give huge sums to politicians and those politicians then act in ways that benefit their donors either directly or indirectly. Of course, both parties vehemently deny that there is a quid pro quo, arguing that donors merely contribute to those elected officials and candidates who already agree with them. Some studies have seemed to provide support for this position.
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Fact-checking The Galaxy Song

This song from the Monty Python film The Meaning of Life is an extraordinarily good one, inviting us to marvel at the wonder and vastness of the universe and putting into perspective our place in it.

I knew that the facts in the song were roughly correct but Bill Andrews has done a detailed, line-by-line, fact check and finds that it is remarkably accurate except for two or three items. Pretty good, Eric!

This cannot be just a Pennsylvania problem

The most recent scandal involving sex abuse in the Catholic church has received widespread attention because of the numbers of children and priests involved and the scale of the cover up. The courts released a grand jury report that was devastating.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has released a grand jury report detailing sex abuse in the Catholic Church, naming over 300 accused clergymen.

The landmark grand jury investigation found more than 1,000 children had been abused by members of six dioceses in the state for the last 70 years.

Officials say the probe found systematic cover-ups by the church.

The report is the latest inquiry into allegations of sex abuse by Catholic clergy worldwide.

After an 18-month investigation, “over one thousand child victims were identifiable, from the church’s own records,” the grand jury states in the report released on Tuesday.

“We believe that the real number – of children whose records were lost or who were afraid ever to come forward – is in the thousands.”

The document states that young boys and girls, as well as teenagers, were abused by clergy.

“All of them were brushed aside by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institution above all,” the report reads.

Due to alleged cover-up efforts by the church’s senior officials, most of the cases are too old for prosecution, the grand jury noted.

But officials warned there may be more indictments as the investigation continues.

While the report names hundreds of priests, some names remain redacted due to claims that naming them violates their constitutional rights.

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The relationship between thoughts and words

Frans de Waal is a well-known primatologist who has written many books on the behaviors of apes and what we have learned about them and from them. In an excerpt from his 2016 book Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, he discusses the relationship between thought and words. He does not share the enthusiasm of many of his fellow scientists to talk with animals to find out what the think, largely because what even humans say may not be accurate reflections of what they are thinking, so why would we place any more credence on what other animal species may tell us?
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Who fires a dog?

According to Seth Meyers, “A racist with a rotted out soul” is the most appropriate description for anyone who calls a black woman a dog, as Donald Trump did yesterday to Omarosa Manigault Newman.

Meyers also points to Trump repeatedly referring to people being ‘fired like a dog’ and rightly asks: Why fires a dog?

Red light cameras

Running a red light is a very dangerous thing to do. Red light cameras that photograph cars that do this are proliferating in many areas. They take a photo of offenders who are then cited and fined. But one study done in Houston finds that while they do reduce the number of people running red lights, they do not necessarily reduce the number of accidents.

During the past decade, over 438 U.S. municipalities, including 36 of the 50 most populous cities, have employed electronic monitoring programs in order to reduce the number of accidents. Red light camera programs specifically target drivers that run red lights.
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Evidence clearly shows that camera programs are effective at decreasing the number of vehicles running red lights. In one study in Virginia, red light cameras reduced the number of total drivers running red lights by 67 percent.
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Exploiting prisoners for profit

That the prison industry in the US is abusive towards its inmates is well known. What is perhaps not so well known is how it takes advantage of their captivity to squeeze even more money out of them and their families. As Victoria Law writes, one way they do that is by demanding that families can only communicate with inmates through private companies that have been granted monopoly rights to provide this service at exorbitant rates. Since both prisoners and their families are desperate to keep in touch with each other, they are ripe for exploitation. One of the worst companies is called JPay.
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And now here’s The Omarosa Show!

No one could ever figure out what Omarosa Manigault Newman’s job was as an aide to Donald trump. The only thing we heard about was that she spent a lot of time planning an elaborate wedding for herself using the White House as a background. But now it is becoming clear that she spent a lot of time talking to people and, according to her, secretly recording the conversations.
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