Two atheists Seth Andrews and Matt Dillahunty visited Ken Ham’s theme park the Ark Encounter in Kentucky and provide a guided tour of the place so that you don’t have to shell out 40 bucks (plus $10 for parking) for the privilege. I never had any intention of going there (even though it is relatively close by, less than a five-hour drive) so was glad to see this video and realize how little I was missing.
The Harvard Kennedy School of government has really made a mess of things. When they invited Chelsea Manning to be a Visiting Fellow, it unleashed a storm of protest from members of the intelligence community
Manning’s invitation to address students of the school’s Institute of Politics was denounced by Mike Pompeo, the CIA director who cancelled an appearance at Harvard on Thursday, and by former deputy director of the agency Mike Morell, who resigned his own visiting fellowship in protest at what the two men described as the honoring of a “traitor”.
One sign that Bernie Sanders’s single-payer health care plan is more substantial than earlier efforts is the quick and angry response of the parasitic health industry. They seem to be fearful that this movement might gain steam and are seeking to nip it in the bud. The major health insurance companies are already out with strong statements.
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The recent actions by Donald Trump that seemed to indicate a willingness to work with Democratic leaders on funding the government, raising the debt ceiling, restoring the DACA, and backpedalling on the wall program has resulted in some commentators starting to speak of him as an ‘independent’. But we should not dignify the words of and actions of someone who could well reverse himself on any of these things at any moment with a label that suggests that he is acting according to some principled plan.
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A short while ago, residents of Arlington, VA were startled to see a driverless car passing through its streets. At one point a reporter on foot approached the car and looked in and saw that the car did have a driver but that he was disguised as a car seat that he could see through and was controlling the car with his hands held low.
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Those of you who watched the disturbing but gripping Vice News video of the neo-Nazis and white nationalists marching in Charlottesville during that infamous rally in support of confederate statues would recall that one of the chants they used was “Blood and Soil”. The meaning seemed unclear to me but taken in conjunction with their other chant of “Jews will not replace us”, I gathered that it had some kind of anti-Semitic origins but was not sure what. Historian Yoni Anijar explains that it dates back to the 19th century.
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One of the paradoxical signs that god does not exist is how religious apologists keep trying to prove that s/he does exist. After all, no one tries to prove that the Earth exists or that the Sun exists. Surely the existence of gods should be at least as manifest. As I wrote before, attempts to prove god’s existence may actually weaken belief. But we periodically encounter people who claim that they have a killer argument in support of god’s existence and an exuberant press release touts a new book by Edward Feser that once again claims to do so.
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For something light, we turn to the embarrassment that Ted Cruz is currently suffering for having ‘liked’ on social media a porn video. In subsequent interviews, he has placed the blame on a mistake by an unidentified low-level staffer, the usual scapegoats when prominent people suffer any embarrassment.
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Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin is a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and is reportedly extremely wealthy. And yet he seems to be the kind of rich person who is incredibly cheap, the sort who tries to get other people to pick up the check for his own expenses. Maybe that behavior works when he has dinner out with friends but he seems to be trying to do that to taxpayers too.
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Ok, now I am really confused. I predicted that Donald Trump would use every major issue that came before him to push for funding for his precious wall as part of the deal. But now I have been proven wrong twice. First Trump agreed to a short-term extension of government funding and raising the debt ceiling without getting wall funding. And now just yesterday, after a dinner with the two top Democratic party leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Trump seems to have arrived at some kind of deal with them to restore the DACA program that does not include funding for the wall.
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