Comedian Emo Philips writes to express his pleasure that a joke he wrote twenty years ago has been voted the funniest religious joke of all time, even though people have forgotten that he was the creator. I have to admit that I had heard it before but that I had not even heard of Philips. Here is the joke. [Read more…]
Everyone is aware of all the reports that suggest that our cognitive powers go into decline with increased age. As a result, as some of us get into our senior years, we can’t help but identify as symptoms of that mental decline every time we do not remember some thing that we think we should, or when it takes awhile to do something that we think we used to do faster. We may joke about having ‘senior moments’ but those jokes are accompanied by a twinge of anxiety as to whether they are precursors of more serious problems to come. [Read more…]
The Lemon test to judge whether violations of the Establishment Clause had occurred is not always easy to apply in concrete cases and some justices of the US Supreme Court have often expressed its unhappiness but others have opposed outright rejecting it. This is especially true of the second ‘effect’ prong which is hard to evaluate. Furthermore, the test was formulated in a case that involved legislative actions. What about situations involving government actions such as prayer and Bible readings and religious instruction in public schools, the display of religious artifacts such as the Ten Commandments on government property, ceremonial opening prayers at government functions, etc.? [Read more…]
I have discussed before how frightening it must be for animals to learn how to go down steps, and how interesting it was to watch Baxter the Wonder Dog learn to do so when he was a puppy and how proud he was of his accomplishment. [Read more…]
Via Pharyngula, I came across this fascinating graphic from a study commissioned by the Wall Street Journal that shows how time is distributed in a typical 192-minute American football game. It turns out it is only 11 minutes or less than 5% involves actual play action. I think the instant replays (sometimes five or six at different speeds and from different angles) give the false impression of there being more action than there really is. [Read more…]
Jordan Sargent has a remarkable photograph taken by Ingolf Kristiansen off the coast of Norway. Apparently a large number of herring were swimming close to the surface when a gust of cold wind froze the water near the surface, trapping the fish in place. I found this surprising because the phase change from water to ice is not instantaneous and one would think that as it happened the fish would go lower where it remains as water. [Read more…]
On December 31, 2013, a US District Court judge in Brooklyn, New York ruled that US border officials need not have ‘reasonable suspicion’ in order to search and copy people’s laptops, cell phones, and other devices at border checkpoints. The judge’s opinion can be seen here. [Read more…]
It looks like the UK has its own share of nutty politicians who seem to think that their god is like one of these deranged people who go around randomly killing innocent people and causing havoc out of a sense of grievance. [Read more…]
I am taking a brief break from the Greece prayer case to discuss a new court ruling that is significant for bloggers. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Friday that bloggers have the same free speech protections as journalists. [Read more…]
The only time I see any of the talk shows on TV is when clips of them appear to show how idiotic they are. So while I have a vague idea of the various shows that are around, I have never actually watched one for any extended time. The Daily Show’s Samantha Bee does a remarkable one-woman performance that looks at the people and dynamics of a program called The Five that appears on Fox News and she shows more of it than I normally see. [Read more…]