As I feared, the authorities are starting to use force on the Occupy protestors, starting in Oakland. Charles Pierce says that the assault symbolizes the militarization of the police: Make no mistake about it: The actions of the police department in Oakland last night were a military assault on a legitimate political demonstration. That it …
Monthly Archive: October 2011
Oct 27 2011
Relativity-9: The importance of corroborating evidence in science
(For previous posts in this series, see here.) In my series on the logic of science, I recounted how philosopher of science Pierre Duhem had pointed out as far back as 1906 that the theories of science are all connected to each other and changes in one area will have unavoidable effects on others that …
Oct 26 2011
“Wall Street Isn’t Winning – It’s Cheating”
Matt Taibbi, in a must-read article with the above title says that what drives the Occupy Wall Street protests is not envy of the rich but the fact that the system is corrupt and unfair. Americans for the most part love the rich, even the obnoxious rich. And in recent years, the harder things got, …
Oct 26 2011
Crafting a political campaign ad
Stephen Colbert has a couple of funny segments with Republican pollster Frank Luntz about using focus groups to craft a message for his SuperPac. The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
Oct 26 2011
Why US troops are leaving Iraq
Recent news reports have said that the US is making arrangements for a complete troop withdrawal from Iraq by December 31. I said five years ago that I felt that there was bipartisan agreement in the US to keep troops in that country indefinitely as part of its ambitions for global empire, mainly because the …
Oct 25 2011
Is Herman Cain stupid?
Clearly the panel on Bill Maher’s show think that Cain could give Sarah Palin a run for the title of the most ignorant and confused high-profile politician in recent times. One thing that panelist Joshua Green said shed a lot of light and that is that although Cain is described as the former CEO of …
Oct 25 2011
Climate change skeptic changes mind
Global-warming deniers eagerly embrace anyone who supports their cause, however much of a crank that person may be. So any respectable scientist who expresses skepticism about global warming or who criticizes the work of those scientists who have warned us about it is makes them delirious with joy. They were particularly pleased when Richard Muller …
Oct 24 2011
How the Fed secretly bailed out American and foreign banks
Thanks to reader Mark, I came across this report by US Senator Bernie Sanders about a GAO audit of the Federal Reserve that reveals that it secretly loaned out over $16 trillion dollars to American banks and businesses all over the world. The audit also revealed that there were people on the board of the …
Oct 24 2011
Relativity-8: General relativity
(For previous posts in this series, see here.) To understand the role of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, recall that the original OPERA experiment claimed that they had detected neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. This posed a challenge to what is known as Einstein’s theory of special relativity, proposed in 1905, which …
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