The president of Mexico has canceled a trip to the US next week to meet with Donald Trump after he said that Mexico was not going to pay for the wall, following which Trump said that there was no point him coming for the meeting if he was not going to pay. This cancellation was entirely predictable and the first sign that the US is going to be steadily alienating nations that were once its allies.
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The comic strip Pearls Before Swine is not usually overtly political, preferring to cast a wry eye at society’s mores in general. But in the last week it has been more targeted in which the obnoxious Rat gets sworn in as president, starting with the strip last Wednesday. The creator has continued that story arc on and off for the next week that you can see online, such as this one from Tuesday.
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Today is the 12th anniversary of my beginning to blog, starting at first on a platform provided by my university before moving in 2012 to Freethought Blogs. It has been a very rewarding experience for me. I have made the online acquaintance of many highly knowledgeable, insightful, funny, and thoughtful people among those who have read and commented.
Thanks to all very much for providing the stimulus to write. I feel that I have become a better (and quicker) writer because of the constant writing and editing and feedback.
Donald Trump has only the sketchiest relationship with truth. He lies repeatedly and brazenly and in the face of easily available and widely known counter-evidence. This habit was no doubt enhanced by a life in business where he was surrounded by sycophants. One question of academic interest is whether he knows he is lying when he lies or whether he lives in a world where fantasy and reality blend seamlessly. In this age where any crackpot point of view can be found on the internet, TV, and radio, anyone can say “I have heard …” or “I have seen …” or “People say …” in support of their views, confirmation bias can be immensely powerful in that even the slightest indication of support for his views, however unfounded, is seen by him as conclusive.
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She died today at the age of 80. She was a terrific actress as can be seen in this article about her. Although she made her mark in comedy, she was excellent in the dramatic film Ordinary People where she played a cold mother dealing with the death of her son and for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.
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I came across this clip that I had never seen before of a quasi-live performance of the Beatles singing Hey Jude in 1968 as part of a video promotion for the song. The clip first aired on a show hosted by David Frost that begins with them goofing around and ends with the studio audience of 300 people crowding around the group to join in the famous ending. According the person who uploaded the clip, the performance was a mixture of live and lip-synching.
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There are some passing obscure references that I come across while surfing the web for news that I find curious but not intriguing enough to investigate until at some point the damn thing becomes so ubiquitous and annoying that I feel compelled to find out what the hell is going on. So it is with this ‘Pepe the Frog’ meme. It is a green frog that has started being associated with anti-Semitic and other racist tropes. This article describes how it became transformed from a benign, non-political, playful image to being associated with hateful message.
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The rise in the number of people who self-identify as not being affiliated with any religion, popularly referred to as ‘nones’, is now a well-reported story. Richard Flory has been researching this phenomenon and has written an article based on his findings and says that the reasons for the rise are more complex than just the increasing secularization of society.
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Triumph the Insult Comic Dog gives us his take on last Friday’s events.
As some of you may know, there is a blogger named Richard Carrier who used to be on this network but left after certain allegations were made about his behavior. He has now filed a lawsuit against FtB and other skeptical networks and some individual bloggers such as P. Z. Myers.
In order to fight the lawsuit, a GoFundMe page has been set up for contributions. You can read more about the case here.