Searching for new sources of helium

The gas helium is invaluable for scientific research and is used in its liquid form for, among other things, reaching temperatures close to absolute zero. It is also, next to hydrogen, the most abundant material in the universe. That is well known. What is less well known is that our own supply of helium comes from underground gas traps as a byproduct of natural gas exploration. Thus the world’s supply is limited which means that we should not be wasting it on party balloons and the other frivolities.
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Why the bombing of the Kunduz hospital was likely a war crime

The US and NATO commander in Afghanistan General John Campbell has now come out and said that the bombing of the hospital in Kunduz was a ‘mistake’ and that US forces were called in at the request of Afghan forces. But he also admitted that the strike had been approved after going through the US chain of command. He said that “Even though the Afghans request that support, it still has to go through a rigorous US procedure to enable fires to go on the ground. We had a special operations unit that was in close vicinity that was talking to the aircraft that delivered those fires,” which means that the special forces would have been involved in calling for the strike. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says that what the US has said so far amounts to an admission of a war crime.
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Understanding Voter ID laws

By a curious coincidence, just as Republican candidates seem to be doing everything in their power to alienate minority voters, Republican controlled states are taking steps to make it harder for minorities to vote by creating hurdles to voter registration. Of course they claim they are taking these steps because of the problem of voter fraud that repeated studies have shown to be almost non-existent.
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Bye, bye TC!

The Ten Commandments monument that used to be on the state capital grounds of Oklahoma and was the subject of numerous legal battles has gone. Under cover of night, workers removed the monument and took it to its new home outside the offices of a conservative public policy analysis group known as the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. The deadline given by the judge for removal was October 12.
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Why you should not take WebMD seriously

Somehow or other, I have got on the mailing list for WebMD, the medical information site that is often the first one that is returned by search engines when you look for information on anything health related. I get emails from them regularly and on the surface, it has all the signs of being a reliable objective source of authoritative health-related information.
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Bernie Sanders’s Palestine problem

I wrote earlier about the large crowd that attended a Bernie Sanders rally in Boston. But now it appears that there was an incident there that highlights the fact that Sanders is a PEP (Progressive Except for Palestine) politician, like a lot of Democrats. His team threatened to have people arrested for merely holding a sign that asked “Will Ya Feel The Bern For Palestine?”, an act reminiscent of what the Bush-Cheney campaign used to do at their events. Here’s the video.
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The excuses for the Kunduz killings begin

Like clockwork, following an atrocity like the bombing by the US of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, we see the five stages of public relations manipulation by the US government, aided by its media allies. The first is: We didn’t do it, it must have been someone else. Next we have: Well, let’s not jump to conclusions but wait and see for a full and thorough investigation that may take months or even years. The third is: We may have done it but we’ll have to look into what might have gone wrong. The fourth is: It looks like we did it but if we did it was justified because those devious enemies tricked us into doing it. The fifth is: Yes we did it but we didn’t mean to, it was an accident due to the ‘fog-of-war’ etc. and we will pay compensation to the victims (ignoring the fact that there was absolutely no fog involved).
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