I knew that Eric Cantor was Jewish and that his defeat resulted in the loss of one of the highest-ranking Jews in congress. What I had not realized was that he was the only non-Christian among all the Republican members in the US Senate and the House of Representatives. In other words, when it came to religious diversity in that party, Cantor was pretty much it.
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The huge controversy over the exchange of five prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay priosn (which should have been shut down a long time ago) for a US soldier Bowe Bergdahl captured in Afghanistan has been quite incredible. Once again, we have the spectacle of people seemingly deciding their position on one issue by their views of something else, in this case whether the swap reflects well on president Obama, and then using that to drive their message.
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I have been writing repeatedly about the abusive behavior by the US Customs and Border Protection services. Not only do they harass travelers into the country and seem to delight in inflicting humiliation on them, they also seem to be cavalier with using deadly force. And when complaints are lodged, they ignore them or treat them with contempt.
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Recently we have had some studies showing the remarkable intelligence of crows as problem solvers and their ability to use tools. Given this information, it was thought that they would also be good at inferring causal relationships. But as often happens, we find that intelligence is not a simple thing and that success in one aspect of it does not necessarily transfer to other areas.
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We have got used to polls being so reliable when it comes to predicting election results in the US that actual elections seem to be just a pro forma exercise to validate the polls. So last evening’s result in Virginia, where Republican House majority leader Eric Cantor lost his primary race was shocking.
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As part of my ongoing quest to convert readers of this blog into becoming cricket fans, I thought I would share a short clip from 1975 in which West Indian Alvin Kallicharan gives a gorgeous batting display. What makes this even more remarkable is that he scored these runs not off some journeyman bowler but against Dennis Lillee of Australia, a magnificent fast bowler who, along with Michael Holding of the West Indies, had the smoothest and best bowling actions that I have ever seen.
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Jonathan Turley provides a good take-down of Hillary Clinton’s self-serving assertions in her new book, where she tries to minimize her culpability for endorsing the invasion of Iraq and tries to bond with economically struggling people by saying that she and her husband were ‘dead broke’ when they left the White House and had to struggle to pay their mortgage their daughter’s college tuition.
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No one who has seen me in real life will ever consider coming to me for fashion advice. But that does not stop me from giving it when I feel strongly about it. And the introduction of the ‘short suit‘ had me rolling my eyes and thinking, “Really? Men are going to wear this in public and maybe even to work?”
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Science depends on its practitioners behaving ethically. This is important for three reasons. One is because scientists depend upon each other’s work and fraud in one area can really mess up the work of those who use those results. Another is because science has acquired a hard-won credibility with the public that has to be preserved so that those who deny the scientific consensus on important questions like climate change and vaccinations are not given ammunition to claim that science cannot be trusted. And the third is because much of science depends on public funding and that can be threatened by misconduct.
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