Yesterday the US Senate voted on whether to disapprove the raising of the debt ceiling. The motion to disapprove failed by a vote of 45-54, along strict party lines. [Read more…]
Yesterday the US Senate voted on whether to disapprove the raising of the debt ceiling. The motion to disapprove failed by a vote of 45-54, along strict party lines. [Read more…]
That the US has systematically engaged in torture is no longer in doubt. But the full extent of it, exactly how much, to how many people, and in what form is still not clear, since the Obama administration has resisted calls for a full accounting. [Read more…]
The Daily Show looks at all the things that president Obama has been kept ignorant about. Or so we are told. [Read more…]
I have seen almost all the Alfred Hitchcock films. I enjoyed most of them because he showed how you could build up suspense without gratuitous violence and gore, and he avoided horror merely for the sake of it. In particular, I liked the fact that he never resorted to the supernatural. All the weird things in his films always turned out to have rational explanations at the end. [Read more…]
The story about the NSA spying on the leaders of other governments is turning out to have legs and is causing some serious discomfort to the Obama administration. While governments and elites (including elite media) don’t care if the rights and privacy of ordinary people are trampled, they get up in arms if those of the elites are. This is why the story of the wiretapping of these national leaders is getting so much play. The suggestion that president Obama knew about the tapping of German chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone and her conversations is causing particularly acute discomfort. [Read more…]
The question of work-life balance is often posed in the context of professionals trying to juggle careers and family. It is good to be reminded from time to time about the real lives of young people who struggle against great odds to just make ends meet, many of them having to juggle many duties and shoulder responsibilities that the rest of us did not have to think about until we were much older. [Read more…]
On Science Friday last week, I heard a segment about Cotard’s Syndrome, also known as the Walking Corpse syndrome. This is where some people are convinced that they are dead and actually tell other people so, saying things like “It is no use talking to me. I am dead.” [Read more…]
The new media venture by Glenn Greenwald has caused the traditional media to sit up and take notice. The combination of Greenwald’s blockbuster scoops on the NSA, his openly expressed contempt for the way that much of traditional media operates, and the deep pockets of the financier underwriting it, has made them realize that the cozy world in which they operate is soon going to be under serious attack. [Read more…]
Via Jonathan Turley, I came across this video of a group of Hungarian shadow dancers known as Attraction. It is a wonderful performance. The catch is that this clip is from some talent show in which the annoying Simon Cowell appears but you can ignore that. [Read more…]
Via reader Norm, I heard of this story from France where a young woman was subjected to a crucifixion-style exorcism by her former boyfriend and three others, all members of the Seventh Day Adventist church, because they thought she was possessed by the devil. [Read more…]