Wine tasting

I am definitely not a gourmet when it comes to food and drink. My senses of taste and smell are not highly developed and I do not frequent fancy restaurants. My idea of a good eating experience is to order familiar take out dishes from local Chinese, Thai, Indian, and Mexican restaurants. My reaction to food consists of just three categories: good, okay, or bad. [Read more…]

Why young people become atheists

Larry Alex Taunton (a Christian) has an interesting article in The Atlantic magazine where he undertook a project to interview young people who had become atheists. It was not meant to be a scientific survey but more a collection of individual stories, which can often provide richer insights than dry statistics. While Taunton’s goal was to find ways to create a more appealing form of Christianity, the themes that emerged from his conversations as to why young people stopped believing are interesting on their own. [Read more…]

The Snowden wild goose chase

We are watching in real time a chess game between Snowden and his supporters and the US government that is bordering on the absurd. The latest is the news that the 12-hour Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Havana that Snowden was supposed to be on left without him but with a large number of journalists who had hoped to travel with him, as the Guardian‘s live blogging reports. [Read more…]

Glenn Greenwald slaps down David Gregory

NBC’s David Gregory is one of the best examples of establishment journalists who see their main role as being to suck up to politicians in return for receiving minor news items that they trumpet as scoops. They see any challenge to the establishment as an attack on themselves and their friends and react accordingly. Here Greenwald puts him in his place when asked why he should not be considered as aiding and abetting Edward Snowden in a crime. [Read more…]