That black drivers are routinely stopped by police on the flimsiest of pretexts is now common knowledge. Just a few days ago, I wrote about comedian Chris Rock’s experience of being repeatedly stopped by police and actor Isaiah Washington’s advice to him to drive a cheaper car if he wanted to not arouse police suspicions.
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I came across a fascinating story about a tiny bird that puts human endurance records to shame. It was a about a small songbird called the blackpoll warbler that every autumn makes a non-stop flight from Vermont to Puerto Rico, a distance of 1between 1,400-1,700 miles that takes it three days to complete. This is a a pretty amazing feat for a bird that weighs just 12 grams.
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Our university is currently going through the very last stages of renewing its accreditation as an institution of higher learning. It happens every ten years and is a big deal. We have to show the accrediting body that we are meeting our mission of providing a quality education to our students and have the resources to do so, so that our degrees actually mean something. The process requires a lot of work for the university because we have to collect all the evidence to support our case.
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With the proposed deal between the P5+1 nations and Iran dominating the news, Jon Schwarz digs up six interesting facts about US-Iran history. Some of them were already familiar to me but all of them are interesting and worth reading.
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We see in Indiana a repeat of what happened with Chik-fil-A a few years ago when that company got calls for a boycott for the anti-same sex marriage statements of the owner. People opposed to equal rights for gays rallied around the company in solidarity and there were long lines of people waiting to buy products. In Indiana, a similar thing occurred with people sending lots of money to support a pizzeria that got a lot of flak and death threats for saying they would not cater a same-sex wedding.
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Via Tom Levenson, I learned about the 12th anniversary of this memo from then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to then Under Secretary for Defense Donald Feith.
Unbelievable. Read it and weep.
This is how our great minds think. With such arrogance, no wonder the neoconservatives got this country in such a string of messes and caused death and mayhem and misery to millions of people. Why they are allowed anywhere near any job that requires thinking is beyond me.
One of the most powerful weapons that highly controlling religious groups have to prevent defections is to threaten apostates that leaving would mean they would lose contact with family members, especially their children. We know that Scientology does this as do fundamentalist religious groups such as the Westboro Baptist Church and the Exclusive Brethren. Mormons who defect also tend to be shunned by those who remain but it is not a formal policy of the church or as severe an excommunication.
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Back in 2000, journalist William Greider wrote something that immediately resonated with me as being an accurate statement about the way society’s views change on major issues. He said:
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The latest episode of the weekly show Last Week Tonight had the host travel to Russia to interview Edward Snowden and suggest to him how to frame the issue in such a way that ordinary people could relate to and become as outraged as they should be about the extent of US government surveillance.
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South African-born comedian Trevor Noah has been announced as the new host of The Daily Show when Jon Stewart leaves later this year. I was surprised by this move since he is a newcomer to the show having just joined in November of last year. It is also interesting that Noah is, after John Oliver of Last Week Tonight, the second foreign-born host of a political show.
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