In a previous post, I wrote about how in the US, the Supreme Court has ruled that although the government cannot force parents to send their children to public schools, the states can set reasonable standards that must be met by the educational system they do choose, whether it be private, parochial, or home school. The catch is what standards can be considered ‘reasonable’. It seems like in the US, the standards seem to be minimal, as can be seen in the fact that Hassidic schools spend seven out of the eight-hour school day on religious studies, which to me constitutes a form of abuse.
May 18 2013
Thinking about heaven, hell, purgatory, and other ways to waste your time
There is a conference scheduled to be held to try and bring together Catholics and Evangelicals to see if they can resolve their differences on heaven, hell, and purgatory. The announcement says:
May 18 2013
France legalizes same-sex marriage
Yesterday President Francois Hollande of France signed the same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption legislation into law making it the 14th country to do so, after the Constitutional Court rejected attempts by opponents to stop it. The court ruled, reasonably enough, that it “did not run contrary to any constitutional principles”, nor did it infringe upon “basic rights or liberties or national sovereignty”.
May 18 2013
What are the limits of parental rights?
The balance between the rights of parents and the state to determine the wellbeing of young children is a delicate one. Few would argue that the rights of the parents cannot be infringed on in any way. If a child’s life and health is endangered because of abuse or neglect, the state should and does have the right to intervene.
May 17 2013
Why things are the way they are
The late great George Carlin tells it like it is. (Language advisory)
May 17 2013
Leaving the Hassidic community
Ultra-orthodox Jewish communities known as the Hassidim create a cocoon to protect their people from the influences of the outside world. At least when it comes to other groups that seek to separate themselves out, like the Amish, they live in fairly isolated rural communities. But the Hassidim live right in the middle of urban centers like New York, so creating a self-contained world is quite a feat.
May 17 2013
Lady Gaga, Shakira, and I are going to hang out this weekend
Due to various reasons, I became a member of various social networking groups such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+, even though I do absolutely nothing with any of them unless I am forced to. I joined the last one because I was invited to a few of its so-called hangouts to discuss some issues. Of course, all these groups keep sending me messages about what other people are doing and people whom they think I would like to connect to. I completely ignore these messages and often delete them without reading.
May 17 2013
Intergroup variations in IQ
The Jason Richwine dissertation, like its predecessor The Bell Curve in 1994, argued that IQ scores are a good proxy for intelligence, that intelligence has a substantial hereditary component and is thus largely immutable to change by external measures, and that high IQ levels are significant predictors of economic and social success in life while low levels predict a life of crime, unemployment, and general failure. According to Richwine, American Hispanics have average IQs around 89 (the overall average is fixed to be 100) and thus Hispanic immigrants will be a drain on society. (See here and here for earlier posts on this.)
May 16 2013
Stephen Colbert on the Heritage-Richwine affair
He provides a pretty good summary and commentary of the issue that I have been writing about (see here and here).
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive
(This clip was aired on May 14, 2013. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
May 16 2013
Memoir of a Guantanamo prisoner
Mohamedou Ould Slahi is one of the Gunatanmo detainees condemned to indefinite detention. In 2005 he started writing his memoirs in English. His draft of 466 handwritten pages was completed a year later but the authorities suppressed it for six years. A redacted version has finally been published. Selected excerpts from the memoir can be here, prefaced by an introduction by Larry Siems who explains how Slahi ended up at Guantanamo.
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