2015 World Cup update #16: Bangladesh knocks England out of the tournament

Bangladesh finally put an end to England’s misery in this World Cup by defeating them in an exciting game that ended this morning (my time). England won the toss and sent Bangladesh in and did well to restrict them to 275/7 off their 50 overs. As we have seen, a first innings score of 300 has become the minimum target, with 350 preferred on these batting-friendly pitches. Bangladesh had scored only 197/4 at the 40-over mark, and while a century by Mahmudullah and 89 by Mushfiqur Rahim pushed the score up, they could not step on the gas enough in the last ten overs as the England bowlers restricted them to just 78 more runs even though they had wickets in hand.
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Is belief in life after death more important than belief in god?

I have long felt that the appeal of religion lies more with the promise of life after death, the idea that people will live on forever, than on having a belief in god. The idea that we will never be forgotten and that our lives matter and that one day be reunited with those we love is a much more appealing prospect than hanging out with a god whom one does not know. The appeal of a belief in god seems more like a fear-driven negative one, whose purpose is to stave off the chance of being in hell for eternity.
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2015 World Cup update #15: Australia a little too good for Sri Lanka

Yesterday’s game between Australia and Sri Lanka was another high scoring one with Australia batting first and scoring 376/9 off their 50 overs, not the highest in the tournament but a very formidable one nonetheless. Given that teams batting second have chased down scores of 300 several times already, the bar for the team batting first has been raised to around 350 and Australia met it comfortably the standard way, scoring around 150 in the first 30 overs without losing more than a couple of wickets, and then piling on for the last 20 overs. Steven Smith and captain Michael Clarke did the first part and Glenn Maxwell and Shane Watson were the architects of the second part, with Maxwell being ruthless and scoring the second fastest century in World Cup history off just 51 balls.
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The hyperpatriotism trap

Bill Maher had a good segment on the deep strain of jingosim in America that demands that one should never say anything negative about its past or present actions. The problem with such a stance should be obvious. If you think that your country can do no wrong and has never done anything wrong, then you are going to continue doing those wrong things. Politicians of the major parties relentlessly pander to this way of thinking, making it worse. Obama panders a lot too but not enough for some people because he has the audacity to say that maybe not everything was always great.
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2015 World Cup update #14: Two upsets and prospects for the knockout round

Yesterday’s two games both produced upset results. The first one was Pakistan defeating the highly favored South African team in a low scoring game. Pakistan batted first and scored just 222, a target that the powerful batting line up of South Africa should have had little difficulty chasing. But the Pakistani bowlers were on fire and apart from a score of 77 by the SA captain AB de Villiers, the other batsmen couldn’t seem to stick around long enough to have an impact in the rain-affected game and they were all out for 202 in just 33.3 overs.
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Same-sex marriage denouement coming soon

The US Supreme court has scheduled April 28, 2015 for the oral arguments on the cases it agreed to hear where the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld bans on same-sex marriage. The ruling is likely to come in June. While it ponders this issue, the attitudes of the public are changing rapidly. A new poll finds that now 56% of the public favors it, up from 48% just three years ago and from a mere 11% in 1988. This is an astonishing rate of change. Even more than 300 Republican lawmakers, some high-profile ones, have signed a brief for the Supreme Court supporting same-sex marriage. It seems like even if the court rules that states can ban same-sex marriages, it is only a matter of time before those bans too will be reversed, except in the most bigoted of states. Yes, Alabama, I am looking at you.
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How the government treats whistleblowers

The Daily Show looks at how governments treat whistleblowers, starting with the case of the UK-based megabank HSBC where a whistleblower accused his employer of helping its clients avoid taxes in their home countries. Of course the people who take advantage of these kinds of sophisticated tax avoidance schemes are the very wealthy and well-connected and includes the HSBC chief so you can guess how they were punished, and what happened to the person who revealed it.
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