Adults behaving badly

At baseball games, spectators seem to be obsessed about catching balls that are hit into the stands or are thrown there by fielders, even to the extent of adults grabbing them away from children. I don’t get it. Why is the appeal of catching a baseball so great that you would deny a child that pleasure? Maybe it’s my background in cricket where the same ball must be used and people in the crowd who catch the ball throw it back onto the field. It would be unthinkable for someone to hold on to the ball.
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The corrosive effect of Darwin

In his 1995 book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Daniel C. Dennett invoked a metaphor that I have found quite helpful. He said that the idea of evolution by natural selection is like a ‘universal acid’, something that cannot be contained in any vessel because it eats through everything. It is so potent and corrosive that once created it cannot be contained or restricted in any way but breaks through all barriers until it reaches into every space. Once you accept the theory of evolution by natural selection as applying in any area of life, there is no way to prevent it being used to explain every aspect of life.
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Maybe a wall could have prevented the Civil War

One of the episodes of the radio show This American Life presented the sense of mortification one feels when one says something in the presence of others that reveals that you are suffering under a huge misconception that no one else shares. The broadcast featured such things as thinking that the ‘Nielsen family’ ratings for TV viewership were obtained by only asking families that were named Nielsen or that unicorns really existed.
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Barrett Brown arrested again

[UPDATE: Barrett Brown released again after four days in federal prison.]

I have written previously about outspoken journalist Barrett Brown, who was arrested by the government and sent to prison and even spent time in solitary confinement as a result of his insouciant attitude towards the prison authorities. While there, he wrote some excellent insider accounts of what prison life was like and its arbitrary and cruel nature, for which he won awards. As Alex Emmons writes:
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Can you be stripped of your citizenship for not disclosing that you exceeded the speed limit?

The US Supreme Court heard an interesting case on Wednesday, April 26 involving the conditions under which the US government can strip away the citizenship of a naturalized citizen. The details of the case Maslenjak v. United States (it involved a Bosnian Serb who was granted refugee status) are not as interesting as the question that the court wanted the parties to address, which was: “May a naturalized American citizen be stripped of her citizenship in a criminal proceeding based on an immaterial false statement?”
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The Growth Fairy has a lot of work ahead

As predicted, when things are not going well for him, Donald Trump returns to the campaign-style rallies that he loves, because they have crowds cheering for him and his fragile ego needs these kinds of periodic affirmations, however artificial and staged, when he is feeling like a failure. But as I said some time ago, at some point the audience will not be that enthusiastic because the campaign is over and one cannot maintain that kind of energy over a long time. The crowd will increasingly consist of people like Trump who also need these events to affirm to themselves that they made the right choice.
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Confessions of a border patrol agent

Jenn Budd used to work for the US Border Patrol and has written about her experiences and why she left. She says that, “USBP is unfortunately still the most immoral and corrupt agency in the federal system”. Her descriptions of what she observed and endured are horrifying and the rot starts right from the beginning of the training program and goes all the way to the top.
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