One of the big issues that has been driving policy discussions is the impact of America’s aging population. As the Baby Boomers age into retirement, this puts some strain on the Social Security system (since there will fewer young people paying into the fund and more people drawing money out) and increased health care costs.
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Today is election day in South Africa, 20 years after the election in which Nelson Mandela became president and apartheid was effectively ended. It seems like the African National Congress will be re-elected to office despite the record of corruption of the party and its leader president Jacob Zuma, which is partly blamed for the voting apathy of the so-called ‘born frees’, young people who were born after end of apartheid and who can vote for the first time.
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In the second episode of his new show, Jon Oliver had an extended segment on the issue of the death penalty, using the recent ghastly botched execution in Oklahoma as his departure point. Treating such a serious issue in a humorous way carries a lot of risks but I think he managed it well and provided a good case for why the death penalty should be abolished.
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Trevor Timm points out how in recent remarks, Hillary Clinton trots out the same old lies and arguments about Snowden that have been thoroughly debunked. Here are the debunked statements she made that Timm rebuts point by point.
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I do not expect the Catholic church under pope Francis to change any of the major doctrines of the church such as on contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage, and celibacy. However, given his expressions of wanting to create a kinder, gentler image for the church, I did expect him to back off on some of the non-doctrinal harsh measures that his predecessors had taken.
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The situation in Ukraine goes from bad to worse with increasing numbers of deaths, with the latest consisting of the authorities in Kiev killing pro-Russian separatists. Today comes reports that there have been dozens of further deaths in addition to the dozens killed over the weekend, though the details are still sketchy.
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The US Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the prayer practices of the town of Greece were constitutional. The court voted 5-4 with the usual alignment of Kennedy, Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas in the majority, with Kennedy writing the majority opinion. You can see all the opinions here and Lyle Denniston has some analysis of it.
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This is the sequel to the 2004 film Anchorman and has the same cast headed by Will Farrell. I enjoy most of Farrell’s films. There is something appealing about the eternally clueless, vain, insecure, and socially inept doofus persona that he adopts.
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Modern scholarly techniques are used to detect which ancient documents are genuine and which are forgeries. In 2012 there reports of the discovery of a piece of papyrus that seemed to suggest that Jesus had been married. The document had been given by an anonymous person to a Harvard scholar who proclaimed it to be genuine. Needless to say, this caused a huge fuss and scholars pored over it and the weight of their opinions went from genuine to forgery, back to genuine, and now back to forgery again.
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When boarding airplanes, different airlines have different policies. The most common policy adopted by airlines is to board passengers by seat rows starting from the back. This makes a kind of intuitive sense. A few airlines have some kind of zone system. About three years ago, a physicist studied the issue using Monte Carlo simulations came up with a plan that can cut boarding times by half.
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