Is this the secret to trolling?

Some people in the media, especially activists and pundits, feel a compulsion to stay visible in the public eye either because of ego or because that is how they make their living by giving talks and selling books and the like. The way they do that whenever they sense that they are being forgotten is to troll for attention. In an earlier post, I said that it was easy to be a conservative troll. All you had to do was say something outrageous or extreme that would anger or at least annoy and exasperate liberals who would then rise up and condemn you.
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Religion’s terrible guilt trips

One of the worst aspects of most religions is that it lays down major guilt trips on people. It does this by making people believe that that a whole range of things (thoughts as well as actions) that we would consider normal are actually sinful, then it postulates an omniscient being who knows everything including those thoughts, and then promises a lifetime in hell for those who transgress. True, it allows for absolution for those who grovel appropriately but it surely must be keeping people in doubt as to whether they have groveled enough to avoid eternal damnation.
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Book review: No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald

I finished the book (its full title is No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State) in two sittings. It is not too long (about 250 pages) and Greenwald has a direct style where he says what he means without weasel words that makes it easy to follow. It describes how Edward Snowden came to gain access to all the materials he chose to reveal, what made him decide to reveal it, the main contents of the revelations, why it is important, and the reactions to his disclosures. (Notes on each chapter, the index to the contents, and many of the source documents from the NSA that are not in the book or are hard to read because of the size of the font can be found here.)
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All poor children are not equal

The war on the poor goes on apace in the US but it seems like not all poor are equal and recent action in Congress reveals a difference. For many poor children, the free meals that schools provide are their main source of food. This is one reason why school closings due to bad weather are harder on poor families than richer ones. But when schools close for the summer, these children face an extended period without those meals. In order to alleviate the problem, Congress has in the past allocated funds to provide some free meals during the summer as well.
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