Most people would think that the existence of the Higgs boson has been established. After all, the reports of its detection were announced with great fanfare in 2102 and two of the theorists involved in predicting its existence were awarded the Nobel prize in 2013.
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The US Supreme court issued on its last day two decisions that went against women and workers. In one case, they asserted that certain classes of companies had the right to not pay for contraceptive coverage as part of their health insurance offering to their employees while in the other they limited the rights of people to form unions. In both cases, they were continuing the steady process of chipping away at the rights of women and workers.
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For those suffering from World Cup withdrawal, here is the classic match between German and Greek philosophers, courtesy of Monty Python.
He delivers a righteous rant on the absurd way that most Americans have this incredibly unrealistic sense of optimism about their future economic prospects and thus actually support the things that keep them poor, breed income inequality, and feed the greed of the rich. He notes how American politicians, including president Obama shy away from the idea that they are promoting class warfare. I personally am in favor of it and promote it every chance I get.
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While the majority opinion in the Hobby Lobby case argued that it was a limited decision affecting a narrow class of companies, it seems to be part of a general strategy of the US Supreme Court to slowly but steadily encroach on the rights or women and workers for the benefit of corporations.
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A Kentucky legislator, who just so happens to own a coal mine, said that it was nonsense to argue that coal-based energy sources were leading to global warming and in support of his case produced what he must have thought was a clever argument.
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Two months ago, I showed a video of a new computer simulation that fairly accurately recreates the evolution of the universe from around 400 million years after the Big Bang to the present, and also linked to the paper by its creators.
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A restaurant employee in New Orleans was startled to discover the word ‘God’ formed by the seeds of an eggplant that he had cut into.
I am not in general a sports fan. I used to follow sports quite avidly but over time have got very disenchanted with professional sports in particular because they have long become just a big business with greedy owners and corrupt officials exploiting fans. I have disengaged from each sport I used to follow one by one and now I really don’t care what happens with them. In the case of American football, I have moved even beyond indifference to outright hostility because of the brain injury issue.
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Cleveland sports fans let out a collective sigh of relief and whooped it up when LeBron James announced that he was returning to the local basketball team the Cavaliers, four years after he infuriated his adoring fans here with his grandiose departure. This was much bigger news than that the Republican party had picked the city for its 2016 convention. The Plain Dealer celebrated his return in Saturday’s edition with a 20-page supplement full of color photographs documenting his life. This in an era when they have cut back on print issue deliveries (it now delivers just four days a week) and reduced the size of the paper and its reporting staff.
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