More and more jurisdictions are cracking down on the use of cell phones by drivers. To read or text while driving is of course insane, but talking on the cell phone is also bad and is being increasingly banned. Up to now, the use of hands-free devices has not come under much criticism and laws banning cell phone use have exempted them. Some new cars even have such a system built in, adding to the suggestion that its use is safe.
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Somehow I missed the sad news that British comedian John Fortune had died on December 31, 2013. Michael Coveney provides a retrospective of his life. I came across Fortune only about a decade or so ago, when the brilliant improvisational sketches that he did with John Bird appeared online. These took the form of an interview in which one of them would question the other on the issues of the day. I love this kind of deadpan comedy, where the conversation takes an absurd turn but the speakers discuss it quite seriously.
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One of the interesting things about the current presidential race is that the whole issue of the criminal act of taking the US to war against a country that had not attacked it has come front and center. Pretty much all Republicans are being asked about the Iraq war, with the question being framed as to whether, given what we know now (presumably that Iraq did not have any nuclear weapons), they would have made the decision to go to war.
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I learned a couple of interesting things about the tragedy that occurred in Texas when rival biker gangs started fighting that resulted in nine people being killed, 18 others injured, and over 150 arrests. One is that the media are shying away from calling it a ‘riot’ or the behavior of ‘thugs’, the language that comes easily to them if the perpetrators are black. Jenny Kutner says that much milder terms are being used in this case, such as ‘melee, fracas, brawl, fistfight, brouhaha, trouble, and chaos’ (CNN) and ‘shootout, fight, chaos, confrontation, problems’ (New York Times). Brouhaha? For something that resulted in such carnage?
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Last night I watched the Frontline program Secrets, Politics and Torture: The secret history of the fight over the CIA’s controversial interrogation methods, widely criticized as torture that I alerted readers to. The show, broadcast last night on PBS, looked at how the US government has indulged in the most brutal acts of torture and lied about it. For those who missed it, these programs are usually later available online for at least a brief time and may be shown again on PBS. [Update: Thanks to reader lanir, the link to see the 54-minutes documentary is here.]
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I just learned about a Frontline documentary with the above title and the subtitle The secret history of the fight over the CIA’s controversial interrogation methods, widely criticized as torture that is being shown tonight on PBS stations at 10:00pm though your local station might have it at a different time. The description is:
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Jessica Williams of The Daily Show got all teary-eyed as she went to mingle with the opponents of same-sex marriage who gathered outside the US Supreme Court on the day they heard the case, because she thinks that the court will approve of such marriages and she may never get to see this bunch of losers together like this again.
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Sam Wang unearthed some interesting facts about the recent elections in the UK where the Conservative party surprised everyone by winning an outright majority of 331 seats in the 650—seat parliament. He looked at how people had voted compared to the 2010 elections and compiled this table.
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I tend to give the letters to the editor column of the Plain Dealer only the most cursory of glances. One rarely learns anything from them but they do provide a window into some very strange minds. Within the space of two days, I saw two letters on climate change that boggled my mind. Here they are in full.
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The city of Cleveland is on alert because there are several issues that could trigger unrest. I got an email from our university president about contingency plans in case of trouble. Other places of work are warning their employees that there could be disruptions and to be ready to work from home if they can and parents are being told that they can keep their children at home if necessary. City officials and police are taking other preventative measures.
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