Bradley Manning trial begins today

The trial of Bradley Manning begins today. I am not hopeful that he will be acquitted or even receive a fair trial. The Obama administration is determined to punish him harshly and has gone to extreme lengths. After not only keeping him for extended periods under abusive conditions, they have now put him on trial before a military tribunal and rigged the system in such a way as to favor the prosecution. There have been large protests outside the military base where the trial is being held. [Read more…]

An indicator of the state of racism in the US

Take a look at this ad for Cheerios cereal.

My reaction was that it was a cute ad. Of course I immediately noted that child and mother had different skin colors. I thought that was a clever touch in that it is unusual enough in commercials that viewers are likely to watch it to see how it ends since it was clearly a deliberate choice on the part of the company and ad creators. [Read more…]

The future of Michele Bachmann

So Michele Bachmann, one of Congress’s most colorful people, has decided not to run for re-election in 2014. It was a rapid fall from winning the Ames (Iowa) Straw Poll for the Republican presidential nomination in August 2011, to finishing sixth in the same state’s caucuses in January 2012 that resulted in her dropping out of the race, and barely holding on to her congressional seat in November. [Read more…]

The unbalanced scales of justice

As The Daily Show reports, the government goes vigorously after breakers of the law who are small fry while letting the big-moneyed violators go free.

(This clip aired on May 23, 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.)

Interesting insight from the differential aging of dogs

dog sizes All of us know the rule of thumb that says that one calendar year for a dog corresponds to seven years for a human, though the origins of the formula are unknown. But this is a very rough approximation because small dogs age more quickly early on (for the first two years it is 12.5 years per human year for small dogs, 10.5 for medium-sized dogs, and 9 for large dogs) and then age more slowly later. In other words, smaller dogs have a truncated childhood and extended adulthood when compared with bigger dogs. There is a calculator that enables you to calculate more accurately the equivalent age of your dog for a certain number of breeds.

There are two things about dogs that immediately strike an observer and those are the huge diversities in size and lifetimes within this single species. Dogs range from the tiny Chihuahua (2-6 lbs) to the massive Spanish Mastiff (121-154 lbs). Such diversity gives us a unique window to study how size affects aging. [Read more…]