This video of Stephen Fry has been making the rounds. He was being interviewed by Gay Byrne as part of an ongoing series for an Irish TV program called The Meaning of Life, with this episode to be aired on Sunday 1st February at 10.30 pm. Fry is asked that old chestnut about what he would say to god if, upon his death, he discovered that god existed and he was in his presence.
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The cricket World Cup runs from February 14 through March 29 and 14 nations have qualified for the tournament. The set of the top eight ranked cricket teams in the world have been stable for some time, although their positions within the top eight keep changing. Currently, the rankings are: Australia (1), India (2), South Africa (3), Sri Lanka (4), England (5), Pakistan (6), New Zealand (7), West Indies (8), Bangladesh, (9), Zimbabwe (10), Afghanistan (11), and Ireland (12). Unranked Scotland and the UAE round out the teams.
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When I saw the cartoon below, I recalled that there have been times when I too was gently chastised for using the phrase ‘global warming’ and told that it was outdated and that the correct term was ‘climate change’. I was a little puzzled by this for two reasons. One is that I was unaware that there was some kind of shifting standard to be followed regarding usage. The other is that I felt that they referred to two different things so one could not replace the other.
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The war that the US waged against Vietnam was a monstrous war crime that inflicted immense death and destruction from the air on a defenseless people, using defoliants like Agent Orange as chemical weapons and napalm and all the other horrors that the military managed to think up to inflict on a backward nation that was trying to shake off the yoke of colonialism. It was understanding the true nature of this war that radicalized me personally.
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The Super Bowl is being played today. Apart from the fact that football causes serious and permanent brain and other injuries to players, the comic strip Pearls Before Swine provides another reason to not be a fan.
Thanks to reader Reese, I came across this short video by Eran Amir. Take a look at it and see if you can see how it was done. After the jump, you can see a behind-the-scenes look at the filming of it.
One rule of thumb that I have is that you have to be wary of people who say that they have changed and have stopped doing the bad things they once did. It is not that people cannot change. They can, but the most convincing testimony to that effect is that coming from other people, especially those who were the victims of that past behavior, not themselves.
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The announcement by uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan in a long and rambling ‘note to my readers’ that he was giving it up soon has caused a lot of reflection by other bloggers as to the future of blogging. Alyssa Rosenberg says that blogging has changed since the early days when Sullivan started, and that the short form of it, an ongoing conversation mostly of links to other blogs with some connecting language, to is no longer viable.
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As I said before, the Republican party seems to have suddenly discovered that inequality is something that people are concerned and angry about and have decided that they need to address the issue. The Daily Show looks at what they are proposing to do about it.
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Mitt Romney has said that he has decided to withdraw from the race for the Republican nomination for president in the 2016 election. His withdrawal seems to have surprised observers just as much as his previous announcement that he was thinking of entering the race. His latest statement was a little equivocal, suggesting that he still thought he was the best candidate and could win, and hinted that he was open to being drafted as the party nominee if no suitable candidate emerged from the large scrum of current hopefuls and the party is deadlocked at the convention.
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