The Guardian newspaper had a detailed report on the horrific murder on Wednesday night of nine black people in a Charleston, SC church by a 21-year old white man who, unbelievably, spent an hour praying with his victims before opening fire on them.
[Read more…]
There was a time when the limbo was a huge craze with people doing it all over the place, usually accompanied by Chubby Checker singing Limbo Rock, one of his repertoire of songs tailored round a particular type of dance that he got into the popularity charts.
[Read more…]
There are a lot of people out there who have been so riled up by the Republican party and conservative media by wild allegations about president Obama and the state of the nation that they have become positively unhinged and now believe the craziest things.
[Read more…]
The state of Colorado has legalized the recreational use of marijuana and also allowed it to be used for medicinal purposes. But that does not mean that people whose use fits into those categories are exempt from being punished. Take the case of Brandon Coats, an employee of the Dish Network company, who in 2010 was fired for using marijuana legally outside of work hours to deal with the muscular spasms he suffered after he became paralyzed as the result of a car crash. They fired him two weeks after he informed his company of his use and gave them a copy of his medical marijuana card.
[Read more…]
The Rachel Dolezal story (the 37-year old woman president of the Spokane, Washington NAACP with white parents who for some time since leaving college has presented herself as black) has certainly got people’s attention. Given that at bottom it seems to be a story of one person’s attempt to start a new life with a new identity in a new community, something that is not at all unusual given the mobile nature of modern society, the media buzz is extraordinary. The reason is of course because questions of race are always hot-button ones and also because of this story’s man-bites-dog nature. Stories of black people passing as white are not uncommon and, given the history of slavery and anti-black racism in the US, quite understandable. But white people adopting a black identity, while not unprecedented, is certainly unusual.
[Read more…]
Scotusblog has put together a package of statistics about US Supreme Court rulings for the term so far (referred to as OT14).
Opinion Output: Justice Clarence Thomas currently leads his colleagues, with twenty-five total opinions authored through this week. Fifteen of those are dissenting opinions, including eleven that are ”substantive” opinions (those arbitrarily defined as being greater than five pages in length)… As in recent years, Justices Anthony Kennedy and Elena Kagan have authored the fewest opinions, with nine and eight total opinions, respectively. Chief Justice Roberts also has nine opinions for the Term, including five majority opinions, one concurring opinion, and three dissenting opinions.
[Read more…]
No, it is not Superman, as Monty Python would have you believe.
I think I could write something every day about the sense of entitlement of the well-to-do in the US and their obliviousness about how bad things really are and how obnoxious their behavior is. The latest example comes from California where the wealthy are balking at cutting back on water use in the face of the extreme drought. For them, money is the primary determinant of what can and cannot be done.
[Read more…]
Guitarist Randy Bachman (Guess Who and Bachman-Tuner Overdrive) explains how one of the most distinctive opening chords in popular music that most people will recognize immediately (at least those above a certain age) was constructed. You can read more about how it was done in the description to the video by clicking on the ‘share’ link here.
[Read more…]