This clip from The Daily Show ran back in February 2011. I don’t watch CNN so I don’t know if they are still doing these absurd things to try and attract a greater audience or if they have sunk even lower, if that is even possible.
[Read more…]
I live a very sedentary life. Most of my working day and even leisure hours are spent seated, looking at a computer screen. News report after news report say that this can lead to all manner of physical ailments including bad posture, carpal tunnel syndrome, and muscle atrophy. But since so many jobs now involve using a computer almost all the time, what is one to do?
[Read more…]
Once again we have the government announcing that, thanks to the diligent work of their security services, they have foiled a terrorist plot aimed at the heart of the US government and spared us all from a Paris-style attack.
For months, 20-year-old Christopher Lee Cornell had been on the FBI’s radar. Authorities said he left alarming posts on social media, talking about violent jihad.
On Wednesday, agents arrested the Cincinnati man before he could put his alleged plot into action.
[Read more…]
Anti-abortion forces in the US are doing everything they can to make the process of getting one so difficult that while the right to an abortion may exist in theory, in practice it will not be available except (of course) for rich people who can afford to go anywhere and get a doctor to perform one.
[Read more…]
In the waning days of his tenure in office, Attorney General Eric Holder has taken some actions that are praiseworthy. First he has criticized the trigger-happy behavior of many police departments, including the Cleveland one. Then he said that his office will defend the rights of same-sex couples to marry in the upcoming case before the US Supreme Court.
[Read more…]
After keeping observers guessing for a long time as to whether they will take on the issue of same-sex marriage during this term, the US Supreme Court in a notice yesterday finally decided to do so. There were many cases that had been appealed to them and what I found interesting was that they accepted for review the four cases that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided. This was the only Appeals Court circuit that back in November upheld bans on same-sex marriage and I strongly criticized its weird reasoning.
[Read more…]
A French satirical news show Le Petit Journal had fun with Fox News and a claim by one of their ‘experts’ that parts of Paris are no-go zones that look like Iraq or Afghanistan and are so dominated by violent and intolerant Muslims and that outsiders cannot enter those neighborhoods without fear or protection.
[Read more…]
I wrote last month about a mentoring program for K-12 students that was created by the state of Ohio. At the last minute, governor Kasich added a requirement that any schools applying for funds for that program had to partner with a faith-based organization. I suggested that he was pandering to the religious.
[Read more…]
I had heard of Colton Burpo, a young boy who claimed that he had gone to heaven and returned, and whose book Heaven Is For Real (written with his father) became a best-seller and also a film. In it, he describes meeting his grandfather and the other usual stuff people believe about heaven. His co-author father happens to be an evangelical pastor and the fact that the heaven described coincides with his beliefs did not seem to strike people as suspicious. The other co-author was Sarah Palin’s co-author, which didn’t help much.
[Read more…]
Race is a highly sensitive topic and yet so important that we cannot, and should not, avoid talking about it. But what makes discussions about race fraught with pitfalls is that even what to call people of different races is problematic, with terms that were considered appropriate at one time becoming frowned upon later, with those who grew up in one era having to remind themselves that the terms they once used casually are no longer socially acceptable.
[Read more…]