Keith Allison was an elementary school tutor in rural Ohio who happens to be a vegan. He promotes veganism on his Facebook page and one such post said “the cruelty of separation, loneliness, an infant slaughter lingers inside each glass of cow’s milk. Your voice can change the system. You don’t have to support this. Plant-based milks are everywhere and are delicious.” He also posted photos of baby calves in small crates.
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Elise Hu is a reporter for NPR in their Seoul bureau. Like many reporters, she gets angry responses to stories from people who disagree with something or other but this one was a doozy where the person was simply outraged that she did not know the difference in meaning between two words that I suspect many of us (and this includes me) see as pretty much synonymous.
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American politicians pander to the religious. The tried and true method has been to subscribe strongly to belief in a fairly nondescript ‘Judeo-Christian’ god (with the tacit understanding that the ‘Judeo’ part is only meant to mollify Jewish voters and means nothing more) and only mildly to any given church. That way you minimize the risk of alienating true believers in any faction. That worked for the Republican patron saint Ronald Reagan and for any number of presidents. But fresh out of the gate of the announcement of his candidacy, senator Marco Rubio has run into some problems with giving an answer to what might seem like a simple question: What church do you go to?
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Ben Bernanke, who recently ended his tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve, has become the latest figure to go from overseeing the financial sector to being part of it.
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Readers may recall the fuss that ensued when former pope Benedict ordered an investigation into the largest organization of American nuns, saying that they were too concerned with social justice issues, too supportive of health care reform, and not enthusiastic enough in pushing the Catholic church’s anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-contraception message.
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Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show has stumbled on to new, hipper, variants of that old-time religion.
(This clip aired on April 1, 2015. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Nightly Show outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)
The Israel lobby has exerted such a powerful influence on politicians in the US and the media, especially among Republicans, that this piece of news, which should be shocking, has not created much fuss.
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I used to quite enjoy doing those logic problems that were popular when I was an adolescent and a couple of days ago I came across one that is similar to those but for some reason has captured the imagination of the inhabitants of the internet and has been discussed widely. Here it is:
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In reading an article about Marco Rubio’s announcement of his candidacy for the Republican nomination, I was struck by a comment that suggested that his receding hairline might be a problem for him. My initial reaction was: What the hell? Have we sunk to such superficial levels in our political discourse that the amount of hair a candidate has matters? Besides, he seemed to me to have a full head of hair anyway.
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