When I came to the US for graduate school, the teacher in my electromagnetism course in the first semester (who later became by thesis advisor and friend) was an excellent teacher who wanted us to understand a difficult subject and looked at us for cues as to whether we were following along as he proved various things on the board.
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The truth of the Greek dramatist Aeschylus’s famous line that “In war, truth is the first casualty” keeps getting demonstrated over and over again. The latest example is the effort by the US government to revise the history of the Vietnam war. During that war, the US government kept insisting that things were going fine even as the reporters on the ground could see for themselves that things were going horribly wrong. The evening press briefings provided by the military became known as the ‘Five O’clock Follies” and the source of much dark humor.
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In his opening remarks that I discussed yesterday, William Lane Craig made the standard opening move within the college debate framework for those speaking first and arguing the affirmative by framing the question in the most minimal way, thus making it harder to counter. He said that all he was seeking to show was that modern cosmology provided “significant evidence in support of premises in philosophical arguments for conclusions having theological significance”.
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Nowhere is the power of business to drive US government actions more glaringly obvious than the way that taxpayer money gets spent on weapons systems that are not needed and sometimes don’t even work. The defense industry has long ago figured out that if you spread out production facilities around the country and especially in places where key politicians are from, you can be pretty confident that the system will never be eliminated, even if the military itself does not want it.
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The Cleveland Indians baseball team uses for promotional materials the image of the execrable Chief Wahoo that I said should have been removed a long time ago. But on Sunday the ,em>Plain Dealer, a big booster of the local sports teams, came out with an editorial saying it was time for it to go. They pointed out that the team has very slowly reduced its prominence and it was time to take the final step. This was the first time they had taken a stand on this issue, which itself tells you about how sensitive this topic is in this area, and it was clear that they were wading very gingerly into the fray, trying to find a gentle way to give the fans a way to change their minds.
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Bill Maher discusses the recent trend of people having all the power acting like they are the oppressed ones. And as the oligarchy and their lackeys fight furiously against raising the minimum wage at all, let alone to anything even remotely resembling a living wage, he raises the reasonable question of why we are not considering a cap on incomes.
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It was great to hear that Afghanistan beat Bangladesh in a one-day international game at the Asia Cup tournament currently being played. It marks the first time Afghanistan had beaten a Test playing nation since the national team was formed in 2001. For a weary war-torn country, achievements in seemingly frivolous pastimes can be quite a morale booster.
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So now that Russia is sending its troops into the Crimean region of Ukraine, it is time for the US to once again conveniently forget the past and its own actions and discover international law and express outrage at the very idea of a big power sending its forces into another country. And the western media will follow its lead and the public will be none the wiser, except for those who do not suffer from long-term political memory loss syndrome, a serious affliction that is endemic among the western government and media elite.
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I watched the debate Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig held on Friday, February 21, 2014 on the topic of god and cosmology. I thought it was a good one and I will spend a few posts exploring some of the issues for the benefit of those people without a physics background who may have been a little fogged by some of the technical issues that came up.
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Since today is Oscar day, here is another post about films, albeit a downbeat one about the little noticed but important category of Visual Effects or VFX. I have written several times about the way that the special effects film industry in the US is being steadily destroyed. The reasons are fairly complicated but reader Gordon has sent me an excellent article by David Sirota that provides the clearest explanation for what’s going on.
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