Have half a billion dollars to spare?

The Powerball lottery drawing later this week has an estimated jackpot of $1.4 billion, the largest in US history, easily beating the $656 million Mega Millions prize in 2012. Although I don’t buy lottery tickets, the size of the prize made me wonder about the odds involved and whether it might be worthwhile to pick every single number to guarantee winning.
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Cruz’s birther challenge gets more interesting

The issue about Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be president seems to be having much greater staying power than I had anticipated. Donald Trump has been making it an issue sufficiently strongly that Cruz has felt obliged to even release his mother’s birth certificate. For me at least, it initially seemed like a chance just to make fun of Republicans who find themselves hoist with their own petard, the tables turned on them after they raised such a big fuss over president Obama’s eligibility. But with Cruz, the issue has suddenly taken a rather more serious turn due to recent developments.
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How my views align with the various candidates

I came across this online questionnaire that asks you for your opinion on various issues and then lets you know how well you align with the various candidates running for president in the different policy areas and overall. It is more sophisticated than most such things since it not only asks you for multiple choice responses to various questions, it also asks you how strongly you feel about the issue. What I particularly liked was that it provides more nuanced options if you don’t find the first pair of binary options satisfactory, which I often didn’t.
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The singular ‘they’ gains increased acceptance

There is an awkward, long-standing, and frequently occurring problem of how to refer in the third person to someone whose gender is unknown. The use of ‘he or she’ or ‘him or her’ is the traditional option but as anyone will attest, this is cumbersome and inelegant for both the writer and the reader. It also does not address the question of people whose gender identification does not fit into the binary category.
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Koch money speaks louder than Koch words

Charles and David Koch are billionaire industrialists who have used their vast wealth to launch major campaigns at the local, state, and federal levels to influence (read ‘buy’) legislators so that they can get legislation passed that advances their own interests. They do this by contributing to contributing to candidates directly or through Super PACs, creating and supporting so—called think tanks that advance their interests, funding lobbying groups that work ceaselessly on their behalf, and in any other way that they can think of.
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Sanders has a great discussion with The Nightly Show panel

The last segment of The Nightly Show features the evening’s guest joining Larry Wilmore and a selected panel of (usually) comedians to discuss a current issue. The weakness of the segment has been that the topic often had no connection to the background or expertise of the guest. But last week Wilmore had Bernie Sanders again on his show and they had an extended discussion on the issues that Sanders is addressing and it was an informative discussion, funny and yet serious.
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How time flies when you’re having fun

Today marks the fourth anniversary of my blog as part of the Freethought network, though I had been blogging on my earlier university site since January 2005. I truly never thought that I would keep it up for so long and still enjoy it. It has been the lively and enthusiastic response of the readers that has contributed to the enjoyment, in addition to being a learning experience for me.
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The Oregon militants should not be allowed to avoid prosecution

There are mixed reports coming out of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Oregon where a group of armed people have taken over the property in the name of the ‘people’, to ‘restore the constitution’, ‘fight government tyranny’ and all the other things that get right-wing paramilitary groups get all fired up. Tim Dickinson has been following events closely and gives us some background on some of the members of this group.
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