Satan is on a roll

A money-grubbing preacher of a megachurch (is that redundant?) called the World Changers Church International with the highly appropriate name of Creflo Dollar beseeched his congregation to donate generously so that he could purchase a new luxury private jet that costs $65 million to replace the one he already has. The new plane is a Gulfstream G650, a model that has billionaires waiting in line to purchase, and no self-respecting man of god would be seen dead without one.
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Violent protests and their root causes

The city of Baltimore is experiencing violent clashes between members of the public and the symbols of authority such as police and firefighters, accompanied by looting and fires. This has resulted in a state of emergency being declared and a week-long curfew from 10:00pm to 5:00 am imposed. The clashes broke out following the funeral of Freddie Grey, the 25-year old man who died in police custody.
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What actual harm will result from allowing same-sex marriage?

The answer is, of course, none at all. The feelings of some religious people will be offended but that is about it. But Pema Levy says that opponents feel that their prior inability to articulate actual damage has hurt them in past legal cases and so they filed several briefs in tomorrow’s Supreme Court case where they marshal the evidence for the tangible harm that will arise if same-sex marriage is allowed.
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A good primer on Tuesday’s same-sex marriage hearing

Tomorrow the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the issue of same-sex marriage. Of course, what the court usually looks are not broad questions but more narrowly focused ones that can have broad implications, and understanding what those questions are enables us to better understand the oral arguments. Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog is my go-to person for explaining the background to cases and he has written about the questions that will be at play.
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Is a sentence of life imprisonment without parole humane?

I hate the death penalty for many reasons that I won’t bother to go into here. But the recent results of an investigation about how over many decades the FBI faked forensic evidence to aid the prosecution in criminal cases should settle the case against it once and for all since it throws serious doubt on our ability to reach the level of certainty about guilt that a death penalty requires. (Thanks to Marcus Ranum for the link.)
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The GMO debate

There is a lot of heated debate over the use of genetically modified organisms or GMOs, especially when it comes to food. I have not quite understood some of the opposition to it. There seems to be nothing intrinsically dangerous about food that has been genetically engineered in the laboratory to be different, since nature and agricultural practices have been genetically modifying organisms over a long time. I would have little worry about eating a genetically modified food, for example, although I must admit that I have not studied the topic in great detail.
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On not getting On The Road

As an immigrant to America who arrived after graduating from college, I missed out reading the classics of American literature, not to mention learning about historical events that are referred to in shorthand by their names (Appomattox, Valley Forge, and the like) that most native-born Americans get as part of their schooling. I have tried to fill in my knowledge these cultural touchstones as best I can, with varying levels of success.
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Subsidizing businesses and the rich

The level of determination shown by some to prevent the poor from leading decent lives is unbelievable. Take for example the people who work in restaurants and other places that depend upon tips to supplement their very low wages since such workers have lower federal minimum wage requirements than non-tip jobs. Republican legislators in the state of Minnesota seem to feel that some of these workers are earning too much and have taken steps to reduce it.
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The great gyrocopter escapade

Last week the media were all agog are about the exploits of a 61-year old postal worker Doug Hughes, who piloted his gyrocopter below the radar and landed near the White House and the Capitol building to deliver letters to each member of Congress protesting the state of campaign finance in the US, a worthy cause indeed since that is a scandal. You can read the letter here. It is a pretty good analysis of the problem.
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How physics conferences treat crank papers

PZ Myers had a post about a paper presented at the April meeting of the American Physical Society that made some outlandish claims about locating god’s throne. Some readers may be curious about how such a crazy paper made it into the program of a serious physics conference organized by the world’s largest professional organization of physicists and of which I am a member.
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