Robert Adler has a nice article with the title Why is there something rather than nothing?explaining what our best theories say about why the universe exists at all and why it has the properties it does, such as being so flat and uniform.
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I said that I had gotten bored with making fun of the bogus ‘war on Christmas’. How many jokes and snide remarks can you keep making year after year? But I see that American Atheists has not lost its zest for the fray and is not letting the season go by without using it as another way to increase the visibility of atheists in the US and they have unveiled yet another new billboard campaign.
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The recent deaths of two young black males Michael Brown and Tamir Rice at the hands of white police officers has brought the issue of racism in the police front and center in the national debate. Some of the discussions following my previous posts about the race factor in police shootings centered around whether race played a role in the likelihood of people getting shot, or whether the publicity given to these deaths was presenting a wrong image of the situation, and that anecdotal information was driving a false narrative. In other words, do we really know if, all other things being equal, it is more likely that a black person would be shot by police than white people.
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The comedian was interviewed by Frank Rich prior to the release of his new film Top Five. The interview has been widely commented on because Rock says many things that are likely to make people uncomfortable and that is unusual for celebrities who typically do not talk politics for fear of offending anyone. Here’s a sample:
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The peer review system, one of the bedrocks of academic publishing that helps to ensure the quality of research papers, is in trouble. For those not familiar with the system, when a researcher wants to publish the results of their labors, they send the finished manuscript to their journal of choice. The editors in turn have three choices: choose on their own to publish or reject if they feel they have the expertise to judge, or send it out to one or more reviewers who are experts in the same field to obtain their opinion first. The last option is the most common one.
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The current spate of shootings of black people by white police has raised the issue of whether race is the determining factor. A case can be made that what we have as the ultimate cause of such shootings is a police culture nurtured to have an authoritarian mindset in the service of an increasingly authoritarian state that views poor people as potential threats to law and order, especially at a time of rising inequality.
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It happens quite frequently. You are in a social situation and someone makes a comment in passing that displays a level of, if not outright bigotry, at least some insensitivity to issues of race or gender or sexuality. The remark is usually thrown out casually as if the speaker thinks that this view is the norm or correct. What should one do in such a situation?
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The killing by police of a 12-year old boy Tamir Rice who had been reported on a 911 call as waving around a toy gun has caused a major controversy in Cleveland, coming so soon after the events in Ferguson. You can see the video of the events leading up to the shooting here.
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The cricket world was stunned by the news that a top Australian cricketer Phil Hughes was killed after being hit at the base of the skull by a ball. Serious head injuries had been more common in the past but were greatly reduced ever since batsmen started wearing protective gear like hard helmets with face masks and extensive padding over the body, though they do still happen.
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For people who arrived in the US as adults, as I did, Thanksgiving does not carry with it the childhood associations that it has for those who are native-born and initially it left me rather cold. But over time, it has become of my favorite holiday for many reasons.
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