Take a look at this sentence in an article in The Guardian. The author writes, “Few attendees at Sanders rallies – least of all Sanders – seem the least bit phased”. The context clearly implies that the author meant to use the word ‘fazed’ which means “to cause (someone) to feel afraid or uncertain”, whereas ‘phased’ means something else entirely.
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I have not read Ayn Rand’s major work that supposedly lays out her philosophy of objectivism and that has attracted devoted followers like Speaker of the House of representatives Paul Ryan, former chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, and a host of other libertarian-minded people.
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As Christian churches in the west fret over the increasing numbers of young people who are leaving institutionalized religion, they have tried various ways to lure them back in. A novel idea is to produce a new Emoji Bible at the low, low price of $2.99
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Eric Boehlert looks at how the Republican Party and especially Fox News have surrendered to Donald Trump and the widely panned softball interview that supposed tough interrogator Megyn Kelly gave him was the best indicator of it. He quotes the New Yorker magazine saying that the interview was “a useless exercise, except, perhaps, for those watching from one group: Republicans looking for a script for how to surrender to Donald Trump.”
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I have been watching some older films recently, made somewhere between 10 and 20 years ago. What I noticed was that while many of the male actors were still around and appearing in current films, the female actors seemed to have disappeared, even though they had starring roles in the films I saw.
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Thanks to the huge fuss generated by the issue of which public bathrooms transgender people can use, I have learned a lot more about the issue of bathrooms than I would have ever imagined. While the idea of public bathrooms separated by gender has, like any practice whose origins are lost in the mists of time, come to be seen as the natural order of things not requiring any explanation, this article by Terry S. Kogan, Professor of Law at the University of Utah, says that it was the result of a deliberate sexist ‘separate spheres’ ideology that saw women’s role as to be in the home to take care of children and do household chores.
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Donald Trump initially welcomed the idea of debating Bernie Sanders but then put in a condition saying that he would do so only if the debate sponsors would put up $10 million to be given to charity. That ploy seemed to be designed to avoid him carrying through on his promise. Then Richie Hecker, chairman and CEO of a tech company called Traction and Scale, came forward and made just such an offer.
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A little over a year ago, I was invited to lunch at a friend’s place and among the other guests were an Indian-American academic economist and his wife and mother. The discussion turned to politics (specifically the issue of net neutrality that was in the news at that time) and I found myself in disagreement with that family. At one point in the discussion, the economist said that his position was based on sound capitalist principles and he seemed to think that this clinched the argument. I replied that I was a socialist and that hence I did not have to accept the premises of his argument.
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Political campaigns draw grifters like moths to a flame. The fact that money sloshes around so freely attracts hustlers who promise to reward the candidate with access to special groups and in return get favors if the politician does win the office that is sought, and in addition use their proximity and presumed closeness to prominent political candidates to enrich themselves by peddling influence.
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