The inexplicable obsession with treating tragedies as hoaxes

Three years ago yesterday, 20 children and six adults died in the massacre that took place at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. It was a tragic event, as all such events are, with the added poignancy that always accompanies a child’s death. There are apparently people who think that the whole thing was a hoax that was perpetrated for who knows what reason, but they think that the government and president Obama are behind it
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These are the people who like Trump

Today is yet another Republican debate featuring nine people in the main event with Chris Christie just squeaking back in and Rand Paul barely avoiding getting relegated to the minor league. The field has effectively narrowed down to just three people (Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio) and you can expect to see them sparring with one another, with Jeb Bush and Ben Carson struggling to act as if they are still relevant.
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That’s science, baby!

Residents of a North Carolina town reject solar power plan because they think it will use up all the sunlight and kill the plants.

A town meeting in Woodland, North Carolina heard public comments on a proposed solar farm in which citizens, including a retired science teacher called Jane Mann, spoke out against the proposal.

Ms Mann opposes the solar expansion because she believes it would lower her property values. She also said that plants near solar farms do not thrive because there wasn’t enough sunshine left over for them to photosynthesize. She also evinced a belief that solar panels cause cancer. Her husband added that solar panels “suck up all the energy from the sun.”

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Meet the Iowa Republican voters

On Monday, February 1, 2016 Iowa holds its caucuses. This is a complicated process and there is a long and tortured path from what takes place that evening to how the final delegates to the party convention are apportioned. So in one sense, what happens that night is not really definitive but the media, anxious to quickly identify winners and losers, have used the non-binding secret ballot that begins the proceedings as their marker and this can lead to problems as in 2012, when Mitt Romney was declared the winner on caucus night but later it turned out that Rick Santorum had edged him out.
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Are atheists attacking the wrong god?

There comes a time when, on some particular issue, I start to feel that I have heard and said all that I really care to on that subject, have formed a pretty firm opinion about it, and am no longer really interested in debating its merits much more since I am unlikely to learn anything new. The only reason to further engage with the question is to challenge the propagation of ideas one thinks are wrong and harmful.
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Countering the George W. Bush rehabilitation project

It is a striking testimony to how far the Republican party has gone off the rails in its xenophobia and anti-Muslim venom that some people in the party are now looking back fondly at George W. Bush as a model of how one should respond to the appalling actions taken by some Muslims, such as in the San Bernadino attacks. Following the events of 9/11 he is now said to have struck the correct note, carefully distinguishing between the specific beliefs of the people who carried out those attacks and the vast mass of people who happened to share their same religion.
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