I was disturbed by this news story about people using fake therapy dogs in order to be able to take them places that they might otherwise not be allowed to go. And they actually brag about doing so, as if it is clever to abuse this aid given to people with disabilities. [Read more…]
An advertisement from Thailand is actually a poignant three-minute film.
It is good to be reminded that we should be kind to one another, even (and especially) if we expect nothing in return. As ad that does that is far more than just an ad.
In a recent comment, CaitieCat said something that really surprised me. She pointed out that in English, whenever a noun is prefaced by multiple adjectives, those adjectives follow a specific order. We all instinctively use that order though, as far as I can tell, no one is ever actually taught to do so but pick it up as they learn language. [Read more…]
Regular readers of this blog likely have noticed that I have not been covering beauty contests with sufficient due diligence so here are some items to make up for that deficiency. [Read more…]
Religion thrives on mysteries, those things that seem so inexplicable that we do not know how to even begin investigating them, what questions to ask, and what tools to use to study them. We are tempted to just throw up our hands. Puzzles, on the other hand, are those things for which we do not as yet have answers but do know what questions to ask, have hypotheses about what might be going on, and can investigate systematically. [Read more…]
So Larry Summers will not be the next chair of the Federal Reserve. He has withdrawn his name from contention, stating that the confirmation process would be too acrimonious. Whether he chose to do this on his own or whether president Obama nudged him to do so because he could not afford another bruising fight with Congress and his own party supporters who objected to Summers is not clear. [Read more…]
It should have come as no surprise that US secretary of state John Kerry scurried over to Israel as soon as he could after reaching a deal with the Russians that averted the bombing of Syria, at least for now. Israel and its lobby in the US had been going flat out for the US to bomb Syria. AIPAC went all-out in support of the congressional resolution authorizing bombing Syria, after being signaled by the Obama administration that it needed help in getting the legislation passed. Back on September 5, when it looked like Congress was going to balk at going to war, the lobby went into overdrive. [Read more…]
Yesterday was his eighth birthday.
In general, I find that the next generation to be more tolerant, more accepting of diversity, less religious, and less warlike than the earlier ones, which gives me some hope for the future. But on a recent visit to Israel, Philip Weiss finds (admittedly based on personal experiences and not as part of a scientific survey) that the younger generation there was more warlike about Syria than the old-timers. [Read more…]
One of religion’s weakest points is that of prayer. People are urged to pray to their gods and invariably these prayers end up at least partly being requests for things or other forms of divine intervention. Naturally, prayers are not answered (except by sheer coincidence) so it becomes the task of religious leaders to rationalize away this seeming lack of responsiveness on god’s part. [Read more…]